Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Monday, July 07, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Grand theft empathy
After playing Grand Theft Auto IV over a few weeks now, I feel mean, stressed and empty. The initial sense of awe at the detailed gritty realism (and extraordinary visual richness) of Liberty City has receded, leaving me gradually to descend into an uncanny valley of grim, money-grubbing and compromised characters. I really don't like myself as Niko Bellick.
The inhabitants of Liberty City live in that uncanny valley where the people are almost life-like, but that almostness makes their presence cold and cadaverous. The uncanny valley was famously founded by roboticist Masahiro Mori, who observed that increasingly realistic robots (and simulations) reach a point where more realism suddenly creates negative affect in those relating to it. The valley is a dip towards the right of a graph that plots degree of realism along the horizontal plane, and familiarity on the vertical. You don't feel for the almost real. This sensation certainly also applies to video games, as an article in Slate observes in 2004.
The earlier GTA characters like Tommy Vercetti (Vice City) and CJ (San Andreas) also lived in complex crime worlds where life was cheap, but their cartoonish aesthetic (imposed partly by the limitations of last generation consoles) made their antisocial deeds more of a caricature. The mise-en-scenes of faux-1980s Miami beach / Scarface (VC) and black American crime movies (SA) referenced popular culture more than 'real' life.
This time the designers have dropped these postmodern affectations and returned to a dirty realism (closer to the first 3D GTA game, GTAIII). Even the comical figure of Niko's cousin Roman is too believable in his deluded enthusiastic celebration of what, against all evidence, he sees as a land of opportunity. And yet, he is one of few sympathetic characters in a world in which everyone is compromised, self-obsessed and at least slightly insane.
The very realism of the gameplay is alienating. The gunplay is more brutal and unforgiving than earlier games. Most graphical is the way my avatar dies. In earlier games, the camera floats off above the body, as if ascending to heaven. At the point of death in GTA IV the world shudders and blurs, the scene turns to high contrast black and white, and almost all control is lost, except for a momentary capacity to glance around at the world as your character's perception fades. Often Niko's limp body is literally thrown around with rag-doll physics. Sometimes the character who has just fired the fatal shot makes a sarcastic remark as the life drains from your avatar's corpse.
The unattractive character flaws in the game are most true of my own avatar, Niko. His relentless opportunism and venal amorality in accepting missions from anyone — to steal, murder and pillage — reinforces a sense that I am actually becoming this cold and uncanny cyborg. I hate myself.
(image from http://images.wikia.com/gtawiki/images/1/1a/Gta4-niko-bellic1.jpg)
The inhabitants of Liberty City live in that uncanny valley where the people are almost life-like, but that almostness makes their presence cold and cadaverous. The uncanny valley was famously founded by roboticist Masahiro Mori, who observed that increasingly realistic robots (and simulations) reach a point where more realism suddenly creates negative affect in those relating to it. The valley is a dip towards the right of a graph that plots degree of realism along the horizontal plane, and familiarity on the vertical. You don't feel for the almost real. This sensation certainly also applies to video games, as an article in Slate observes in 2004.The earlier GTA characters like Tommy Vercetti (Vice City) and CJ (San Andreas) also lived in complex crime worlds where life was cheap, but their cartoonish aesthetic (imposed partly by the limitations of last generation consoles) made their antisocial deeds more of a caricature. The mise-en-scenes of faux-1980s Miami beach / Scarface (VC) and black American crime movies (SA) referenced popular culture more than 'real' life.
This time the designers have dropped these postmodern affectations and returned to a dirty realism (closer to the first 3D GTA game, GTAIII). Even the comical figure of Niko's cousin Roman is too believable in his deluded enthusiastic celebration of what, against all evidence, he sees as a land of opportunity. And yet, he is one of few sympathetic characters in a world in which everyone is compromised, self-obsessed and at least slightly insane.
The very realism of the gameplay is alienating. The gunplay is more brutal and unforgiving than earlier games. Most graphical is the way my avatar dies. In earlier games, the camera floats off above the body, as if ascending to heaven. At the point of death in GTA IV the world shudders and blurs, the scene turns to high contrast black and white, and almost all control is lost, except for a momentary capacity to glance around at the world as your character's perception fades. Often Niko's limp body is literally thrown around with rag-doll physics. Sometimes the character who has just fired the fatal shot makes a sarcastic remark as the life drains from your avatar's corpse.
The unattractive character flaws in the game are most true of my own avatar, Niko. His relentless opportunism and venal amorality in accepting missions from anyone — to steal, murder and pillage — reinforces a sense that I am actually becoming this cold and uncanny cyborg. I hate myself.
(image from http://images.wikia.com/gtawiki/images/1/1a/Gta4-niko-bellic1.jpg)
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