Macguffin Games

Prototype: Just Another Male Power-Fantasy Video Game

Interesting interview up at GameSetWatch with Kellee Santiago of Thatgamecompany.

An excerpt:

Kellee: … I’m really interested with this Six Days in Fallujah project that keeps getting picked up and dropped and dropped…

Well… Have you actually seen the gameplay?

Kellee: Nah, I don’t know.

That’s the thing. A a lot of indies are coming out to stress the importance of Konami, but having seen it, it didn’t look very complex to me — like just another male power fantasy video game.

On a related note, I recently got Prototype for my birthday – I started playing it Monday night, and I’m perhaps 3 hours into it.  I’m finding the game both fantastic and laughable, at the same time – the fact that you get to play some cross between a demented superhero and the original alien monster from Alien has been really compelling for the obvious male power fantasy reasons GSW alludes to above.  At the same time, I’m laughing as I play because of Alex Mercer’s amazing lack of personality and dimension.  He is a tone-perfect copy of the misunderstood, angry loner – it shows in his body posture, his dark-and-mysterious dialog, and the game’s purposefully ambiguous feedback on the killing of innocent people.  Hell, he even has his hoodie up!

So – this idea of “male power fantasy video games” has been on my mind.  Nothing really new here that makes it worth relating, except that I realized last night – I’m embarrassed that I’m enjoying this game so much.

I know why I’m enjoying it, and that’s why I’m abashed – it is really fun to just cut loose in the middle of Manhattan by throwing a taxi at some random people, eating one of the terrified passers-by, and then running straight up the side of a building.  I thought that the allure here would be playing a superhero; that was incorrect.  The allure for me is actually getting to be the thing that goes bump in the night.  Alex Mercer is really terrifying – something that is aided by his two-dimensional characterization.

I’m not sure how to react to this.  I’ve spent a lot of my life being at least vaguely embarrassed that I’m a gamer in general.  This is partially the product of a youth spent being told to get off the computer and go outside / do my homework / come to dinner, and partially the product of an adulthood mostly spent being asked when I would grow up.  For the most part these days, I play a lot of strategy and story-based games, and I tend to focus on the more obscure (or in the case of some indie games, high-brow) titles… mostly games I can defend via their complexity, their topics, or their pedigree.

Now I find myself embarrassed about my gaming again, but this time the criticism is from people within my community.  And this time, I agree with the issues they raise!  I firmly believe that we need to move past the tired old power-trips and find the greater breadth and depth in the medium.

But wow, it sure is fun to be a superpowered jackass in Manhattan.