All Games Are Shooty-Shooty

My very first lecture of my third year studies has resulted in this article out of anguish. Before I start, though, this is not an attack on someone’s opinion: this is a challenge against someone’s opinion that openly admitted their lack of knowledge on our industry. And that’s fair enough.

The lecture transpired into innovation in video games. More so, the topic of innovative metaphors in video games. The question we were posed, as fledgling designers, artists, programmers, was simple:

“Do games have more than one metaphor?”

A class of games students answered yes, much to the baffling confusion of the lecturer. Now, like I said previously, they had openly admitted to having no particular knowledge of video games – only what they have “seen” in the news (so, most recently, Grand Theft Auto V). The lecturer’s assumption was that “all games were like Grand Theft Auto – shooty-shooty, go kill that person – and there’s nothing new”.

I don’t need to emphasise any further that my skin crawled at this statement. Even after the lecture, one of my colleagues approached me and stated that he expected me to speak up about their misconception, seeing as we have covered violence in video games in-class and as part of Amber Glass before.

I think we can see there are much more metaphors in games than “shooty-shooty” – micro-management, learning and education, self-discovery and adventure, to name a few – but the pre-conception the lecturer had categorised all games as violent “eMassacres” has me wondering. Is that the media’s fault?

Partly, yes, but it is these companies that develop violent games that are making enough money to have a large marketing budget and advertise on TV and billboards all over the country. If the media took the time to look into the Scottish industry further, though, they’d notice companies like TigerfaceGames and Guerilla Tea that do amazing work for educational purposes and working with communities. No violence involved. And then people would understand that there’s more to games than violence.

I suppose at the end of the day, big money controls the media, and that’s going to be a hard thing (if even possible) to change. But the onlookers to the industry must understand that the media are not showing the full picture, and it’s most likely damaging the reputation and growth of our industry to an extent. Until then, all I can do is advise some lecturers that they cannot preach a message if they don’t do their research.

Andrew Reid

Managing Director