Prototype: Just Another Male Power-Fantasy Video Game
July 7th, 2009 by Macguffin in UncategorizedInteresting 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.
February 10th, 2011 at 4:23 am
Its interesting when you read an article well thought out and specifically on a deeper level analysis on a normal hack and slash game and see no comment, But I suspect the internet is growing inevitably superficial.
Played Prototype on the 360, and after reading your article and comparing it with my own experience from back then, I sadly realize 2 things:
1) For most of the time, no one will take the plunge in the water (do something different/depth/width) until they at least know someone else that did so and came out alive (for lack of a better analogy at the moment), THEN they COPY
2) Even IF we want some innovation (depth, pedigree), there’s still that primal urge to go “balls out” and do carnage with no real life consequences, and gaming does that very well. striking the right balance between this and depth is where you can miss it. Which is why I’ll pick Enslaved: Odyssey to the west over Prototype any day (assuming they both came out the same time, but later on I would still play prototype)
February 10th, 2011 at 10:16 am
Well, that may have a lot more to do with my level of traffic on the site. ;D
I can totally understand why developers go with #1 – there’s a ton of money on the line with any title of significant budget. I’ve been on a couple projects that had budgets over $5 million, one that was well over $10… it’s somewhat scary to receive that kind of money. I imagine it’s a lot worse to be the one throwing it at a developer. On my end, I probably spent somewhere in the low 6 digits on Macguffin Games over the last three years; I’d have a house by now if I hadn’t done that. Not that I regret it, but that’s a huge trade-off to me in my 30′s.
This is one of the reasons that indies are able to do good work – the risk is so much lower. Also, I think we as indies tend to start down this road out of a strong and personal passion, and that colors things a huge amount, too. Have you ever looked into
Thanks for the comment!