By Kieron Gillen on May 14th, 2008 at 10:21 am.
In their Epic issue, the Escapist pays me cash money to vent a little about the somewhat odd double-standard people have about adolescent games, specifically Gears of War.
Along with my peers, I chuckled at the “So Macho” remake of Gears of War as 2006 drew to a close. And this was only natural. Gears of War’s washed-out, hyper-macho vision of a world on the cusp of complete annihilation was more than a little silly. That’s fine. That’s videogames. But my first clue that this satire was solidifying into something else came with Eurogamer’s year-end awards.
Lots more, including usavoury metaphors, digs at Walker and euologising of hypermachismo in the full thing. In short: If wanting that gun Blaine has is in the Predator is wrong, who’d want to be right?
14/05/2008 at 11:04 Rook says:
“Serious gamers” – Uh oh, casual and hardcore weren’t enough for you?
It’s kinda interesting to read/listen to games commentary post review as that’s when people feel it’s ok to really criticise it personally. Crysis get’s more than a passing reference to how bad it becomes post spaceship. Bioshock get’s lambasted for it’s lame moral choice and equally terrible last 1/5th. But these things are generally glossed over in reviews.
14/05/2008 at 11:10 Seniath says:
Saw this last night, very good read, made me chuckle out loud on several occasions :)
14/05/2008 at 11:28 Alex says:
I don’t know.. in the end you have to ask yourself “is the game itself fun enough”. And if it isn’t, the ‘visual sauce’ on top of it can become truly grating (the feeling that the developers are trying to hide something, or rather, nothing), which may have been what has happened with Gears of War (I can’t say myself – I’ve only played the first 10 minutes or so on the PC and that did look like someone had sneezed mud all over my monitor, which didn’t impress me at first glance)?
Also, isn’t this just a general reaction to the cliched mess most shooters have become? I think a lot of people wanted the Old Spice-infused ubermanliness turned down a bit, where GoW actually turned the dial to 11 (and now they’re going for 21, what with nr.2 going to be “”bigger, better and more badass” – oh, how I wish they’d said badasser..).
14/05/2008 at 11:50 Jonathan says:
That article really drives home my fascination with homophobia. Why do some hetrosexual men get so aggressive and even violent towards homosexuals? There’s hundreds of cases where a gay or bi sexual person gets beaten or even killed just because they like jazz and cushions. Or a cock to remove the quasi-offensive stereotype.
I think it’s to do with not being able to *do* heterosexuality. By that I mean prove your sexuality in your behaviour which is why some go so far into macho land. Getting the blondest most titted girl they can find, showing off big manly muscles and driving massive throbbing red cars all fit into the I have sex with proper women. Of course if you can’t do any of that beating the crap out of a man weaker than you and shouting about how they repulse you would work just as well.
Slightly off topic I know.
14/05/2008 at 11:54 Kieron Gillen says:
I was kind of inspired to write it by the people critiquing people’s love of Gears of War as closet-cases ending up inching towards homophobia in and of itself.
And – y’know – to make some gags.
KG
14/05/2008 at 11:56 AndrewC says:
While I do think there’s some strawman simplification of ‘those who are wrong/disagree with you’, as Mr Grumpy Rook tried to express, I do like the argument that while we are too old for the adolescant stuff we are also too old for the kiddie stuff too, so why do we have different reactions to the them.
People, if i am allowed my own strawman argument, who are offended by the adolescant attitude are still too close to that frame of mind to be able to play around in it without feeling shame at all the stupid shit they did as teenagers. Once you have genuinely moved on from that moronic mindset, you can go back to it with amusement, but if you are still struggling within it, there’s a need to kick back against it to prove to everyone (or themselves) that they are not a part of it.
With that said, I can’t agree with you criticising the need of people for these games to have some sort of ironic distance. We do not play kiddie games ‘as’ children, but ‘like’ children. Ironic distance is inbuilt in an adult approaching these games, but if it has to be 100% projected by the gamer onto the game, with no recognition from the game, would the game simply not get tedious? Like those cartoons that are nothing but flashing lights – great for a really young kid, but there’s just no way in for an adult.
And finally, i’m pretty sure there is some ironic distance to be got from GOW. when they’re down in the tunnels and you fight the giant crab thing, just before it dies it leaps up and towers over you, bringing it’s massive claws down, seemingly on top of you…and the main character doesn’t even flinch. It’s so over the top it had to be deliberate, just as that level in COD4 – death from above – with the helicopters and the night vision, was so callous, so dehumanising it had to be a deliberate comment upon the dehumanising effect of real-war-as-computer-game that recent media representations of war has become. Right?
…right?
14/05/2008 at 12:02 essell says:
“just as that level in COD4 – death from above – with the helicopters and the night vision, was so callous, so dehumanising it had to be a deliberate comment upon the dehumanising effect of real-war-as-computer-game that recent media representations of war has become.”
I think it was RPS that interviewed the Infinity Ward people and asked about that, only to be told that (paraphrase) “Nah we weren’t trying to make any statements there, we just thought it would be awesome!”…
14/05/2008 at 12:09 Lh'owon says:
Good read. I do think you leave the obvious question unanswered though — where is the line between stupid stupid and brilliant stupid?
Maybe I’m just Mr. Grouchy but I’d hate to think developers could come out with distilled stupid and get it hailed as brilliantly stupid. Some things are just stupid.
14/05/2008 at 12:11 AndrewC says:
Then that’s scarily compartmentalised.
But then I remember an interview with Cliffy B where he was at some metal gig for a band called something like ‘from a dead tree’ or ‘death, death, misery and some more death, mom’ and he had an epiphany that it was the guys in the mosh pit that he was truly making these games for and he should ignore all other considerations. That kind of made me want to leave them to it.
14/05/2008 at 12:12 Heliocentricity says:
and it was…
“boom! 2 more by the car… he’s still moving, hit him again”
14/05/2008 at 12:12 Jonathan says:
My own problem with “adolescent” games is that they’re never sure what they want to be. They try to do too much like in God Of War where they try to have your god puncher both the unstoppable killing machine but also have a weepy back story. Or in Gears of War where they give you the most ludicrous caricatures of ruthless marines while still trying to make the world seem coherent. Kids games on the other hand seem to have less to prove, they relish in abstraction like collecting jigsaw pieces. They’ll build cartoonish worlds around their characters moves instead of making a realistic setting and shoe horning your character into them. You can’t be embarrassed or pick holes in the story of Mario because there isn’t one, there’s just an excuse. As such all you have is the game itself and, when done right, that is ageless.
14/05/2008 at 12:12 Tom Camfield says:
A slightly adjacent question:
I’m currently enjoying playing TF2 on my mate’s PS3, and I’ve never been insulted there, possibly because there’s no voice communication. I was wondering re: 360, I believe there’s different areas to play, like family / recreation / underground or something, does the pointless abuse only occur in the ‘underground’ area or is it everywhere? I was thinking of getting a 360, but if there’s unrestrained gay hate going on I’d rather get a PS3, even if the 360 currently has a better range of game etc. Cheers.
14/05/2008 at 12:18 phuzz says:
@Johnathan
I reckon the violent side of homophobia comes from fear.
(gross generalisations follow)
Men aren’t scared of women raping them, it’s just not likely to happen, and then suddenly when confronted by a person who could potentially violate them against their will and they get scared and lash out.
Or at least that’s what I’ve always thought, of course peer pressure and cultural stuff play a big part as well. eg you won’t often see someone here on RPS using ‘gay’ as an insult, but go online, and you’ve got a good chance of being called a fag etc. And yet we’re all ‘just’ gamers.
14/05/2008 at 12:24 Lorc says:
I think that Gears of War (like Metal Gear Solid) is one of those games that I can simultaneously enjoy and mock for the exact same reasons without cognitive dissonance.
When played perfectly straight faced, big burly broad-chested capital-M-manly marines are both gung-ho fun /and/ camptacular silliness. At the same time. And not in a bad way either.
(I also thought that the consistently washed-out grey colour-scheme was very effective – especially in contrast to the underground drippy glowy stuff – so I’m probably just an anomalous contrarian and/or pervert.)
If pressed I’d admit that laughing along with Gears of War is something of a guilty pleasure compared to laughing /at/ it. It may be a little embarrassing to enjoy it sans irony, and sometimes I wonder if I’m trying just a little too hard to laugh at it, but that’s just me being self-conscious and I don’t believe that it represents any kind of flaw in the game itself.
Good article by the way.
14/05/2008 at 12:27 phil says:
To misquote Nathan Barley:
“Over stimulated, adolescent boys with ADD and issues will love Gears of War – brilliant; normal people will think we’re being self consciously ironic – also brilliant”.
14/05/2008 at 12:28 Meat Circus says:
I’m confused. If you really wanted to look at big muscular men and huge, dripping cocks, wouldn’t you access a nearest Internet and do just that that instead of chainsawing some aliens?
Gears of War’s failing was never quite being certain whether it was supposed to be taking itself seriously or not, and ends up failing to achieve either the required level of silliness or seriousness to make it a truly memorable piece of heavy weapon homotainment.
14/05/2008 at 12:37 AndrewC says:
Gay men are all potential rapists, Phuzz?
14/05/2008 at 12:40 Meat Circus says:
I don’t think he said that, to be fair.
Though, of course, /all/ men are potential rapists.
14/05/2008 at 12:44 Okami says:
I love Gears of War. It’s big, ugly and stupid. And I for one loved the visual style of the game. Before Gears of War, I didn’t even know just how many different shades of brown and grey there are in the world.
I also revelled int the more than gratuitous violence, you just have to love the feel of your 500 pound Cock err… Cog slamming into a wall of concrete to take cover behind it. And pumping round after round of bullets into incredibly manly and muscular alien hottie… monsters never got old for me.
14/05/2008 at 12:49 AbyssUK says:
It’s just a game about big guys with guns.. like the squillions that have come before it.. I can’t remember big discussions about if the Doom Guy loved penises or indeed if BJ Blazkowicz liked dressing up in ladies under ware.. I don’t get the fascination with gears specifically, honestly it was an average FPS at best with a below average Sci-fi storyline.
14/05/2008 at 12:50 araczynski says:
i’ve got nothing against the site or whoever wrote it, but i get the feeling that he/she is either really bored, or really mad that he didn’t finish shrink school.
nothing is funnier to me than psychoanalysis of a game.
GoW was a good game, i played through the story in 20 hours or whatever it was, enjoyed it, sold it, moved on to the next game. That’s what games are for, for brief enjoyment, and perhaps a short ‘escape’. If you’re into psycho/socioanalysis, you and your thoughts would be more seriously taken if you moved on to, well, a serious topic.
anyway, i need some coffee.
14/05/2008 at 12:52 Colthor says:
“Though, of course, /all/ men are potential rapists.”
And all women are potential prostitutes. The hussies.
14/05/2008 at 13:02 Lorc says:
Words like “potential” or “possible” are very good at sounding like “probably are” and “want to be”, even if the person using them means nothing of the sort.
While this means that using them when talking about hot-button topics is often a bad idea, it also means that what they imply isn’t necessarily what the other person was trying to say.
It would be incredibly silly if things got derailed into flames over an imperfect choice of word.
14/05/2008 at 13:03 Okami says:
And all goats are potential sluts. The way they allways smile teasingly at me.. They want it, I know it!
14/05/2008 at 13:05 Alex says:
I think I just don’t like ironic entertainment, playing a game/watching a film/listening to music with ironic distance. I certainly see how it can be fun but it always feels like I could’ve spent that time playing/watching/listening to something that I actually, really liked (or had the chance of really liking, at least).
I will now opinion away.
14/05/2008 at 13:05 Meat Circus says:
@Lorc:
DAMN YOU, spoiling our fun.
All Gillens are potential genocidal maniacs.
14/05/2008 at 13:07 AndrewC says:
All PC gamers are potential pirates.
14/05/2008 at 13:08 Meat Circus says:
Now you’ve crossed a line. Rape and genocide, fine. But DOWNLOADING A GAME VIA BITTORRENT? You’ve gone too far.
14/05/2008 at 13:08 The Pope says:
I loved the 80s action movie silliness of the game, but didn’t enjoy the gameplay. It just felt slow and clunky to me.
By the way, a heads up to a lot of game critiques – there’s nothing more adolescent than getting together and sneering at how mainstream and adolescent something is.
14/05/2008 at 13:10 Meat Circus says:
Of course, none of this is to answer Gillen’s original question: if the Eurogamer commentariat all hated it, what manner of hanging chad shenanigans got it into the Top 10?
14/05/2008 at 13:16 AndrewC says:
Ellie Gibson?
14/05/2008 at 13:17 Ginger Yellow says:
I agree with pretty much everything Kieron says in that piece, and I’ve found the Gears backlash rather bemusing. It’s great at what it does – mindless, over the top carnage, coop play and flashy visuals and set pieces. If you don’t like that, then that’s absolutely fine and understandable, but it doesn’t justify the hate.
I think part of it is that despite the unoriginality/poor quality of its setting, story and dialogue, it was reasonably cutting edge in many ways at the time, but was swiftly equalled or superceded. It’s harder to see its merits past the cliche now. It was one of the first shooters to have a decent cover system, but now everything does, even GTA. It was the first game to really push next gen consoles’ graphics (technically, if not art direction), but there are plenty of games now that look just as pretty and much more colourful. It was one of the first shooters to have campaign coop play, and implemented it very well. Now lots of games have campaign coop or something similar, although few do it as smoothly (and even fewer with a split screen option). All these reasons justified the high scores/sales at the time, but they don’t make it stand out any more. There’s a whole field of titles with comparable features but much better story/level design/art direction.
14/05/2008 at 14:17 Sucram says:
Golly KG you’re right. People don’t mock Devil May Cry nearly enough.
14/05/2008 at 14:46 Robin says:
Gears of War is the Poochy of action games, representing a kind of ‘cargo cult’ approach to game aesthetics. Insulting to the intelligence of the audience in its insincerity as much as its artlessness.
It’s as if a bunch of executives had noticed that lots of successful games ripped off their setting from Aliens or Tolkien, and misinterpreted this as meaning that there was an audience that actively sought out this kind of mindless Todd MacFarlane piss, rather than that it was the best that the terminally uncool developers could come up with.
It’s what happens when a developer is given vastly too much money but no creative direction, allowing them to retreat to their comfort zone. (And as such must be aggravating for developers who would actually do something progressive with that level of resources.) It’s a game made for a demographic that doesn’t exist, bought into by a captive audience that had no investment in it beyond being bored of waiting for Halo 3.
Doom was brilliant, care-free, wallowing in it’s own filth and adolescent bravado. It was also the product of six mulleted men in a garage, not a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Gears of War is a paunchy middle-aged estate agent doing Megadeth karaoke. It’s not just the games-as-art set who should find it distasteful.
14/05/2008 at 14:50 The Shed says:
Quality article. Although I never really considered any games to be “Teenage” games, I surely see your point. Also, How the hell did I miss the “So Macho” video?!
“When I heard My Chemical Romance for the first time in 2006, just as Gears arrived, I knew that if I were 12 years old, they’d be the most important band on Earth. Now, in my early 30s, they’re the funniest. And I’m fine with it, either way.”
That pretty much sums the whole thing up, but GoW is a game, so you can enjoy playing it to a degree either way. And I still can’t forgive the hunk of steaming proverbial that Black Parade is, no matter how comical their attempts at music are.
14/05/2008 at 14:52 cliffski says:
I’ve never played GOW or even seen a video of it. whenever I see some muscle-bound hunky American football player type with a big gun in a game, I just roll my eyes and turn the page.
I don’t get the appeal, except as stated, in a homoerotic way. They also remind me too much of the attitude of modern day real life marines fighting wars on a dubious premise. This is why I like a good WW2 FPS. Its a historical game about a fight we can all agree was a just cause.
14/05/2008 at 14:52 Jochen Scheisse says:
I didn’t know it was that cool to hate Gears of War. I don’t see a difference between Gears of War and, lets say Halo. Both are no nonsense shooters with no storyline ambition, catering to some mildly different mixture of pride and testosterone. Both are pretty fun to play for a while and become boring quick.
BUT: Gears of War has an argument going for its existence:
TEH CHAINSAW GUN!
If I’m correct, not even Games Workshop Spacemarines owned such a weapon, because its awesomeness was too much even for the Emperors Elite.
UPDATE: I stand corrected
14/05/2008 at 14:56 Doug F says:
I really can’t make up my mind about My Chemical Romance. One moment I think they’ve forgotten the sense of humour in their attempt to be Queen, and the next I’ll be chuckling over a song like “Teenagers”. Their music is funny, but I can’t tell if they’re in on the joke.
14/05/2008 at 14:57 Ginger Yellow says:
At least nobody makes any claims for GoW’s story. There are legions of fanboys who will tell you that Halo’s story is amazing. The nutters.
14/05/2008 at 14:59 dhex says:
where is the line between stupid stupid and brilliant stupid?
as a student of this line, i think it’s got a bit to do with doing a bit too much. the constant near-tears laughter one lets loose when watching tokyo drift, for example – each absurdity piling higher and higher until the audience is throwing down money and placing bets on what kind of ridiculous twist will happen next. (my bet was that the grandfather had actually dropped the atomic bomb and in his guilt invented drifting to try and make up for his actions. i lost.)
a friend of mine showed me a bit of devil may cry 4 just to give me a glimpse of the 3 minute panty-flashing ridiculousness, and i think therein lies the difference between western and japanese juvenile expressions:
japanese developers make games for 13 year olds who want to dress up in cardboard costumes, while western developers make games for 13 year olds who wish they were old enough to buy beer.
14/05/2008 at 15:00 The Shed says:
@ Jochan: Hating GoW has been cool since sliced bread, buddeh. I guess you’re just damn lucky you missed out on all the sardonic comments thrown its way. I simply can’t bring myself to hate the game, personally; it knows where it’s going and its hustling there at a speed of knots.
14/05/2008 at 15:08 Jochen Scheisse says:
I definitely prefer games like GOW to “Yet Another Normandy Simulator 14″.
14/05/2008 at 15:13 AndrewC says:
Perhaps, Cliffski, if you do not see the appeal, you should play it a bit to see.
And war is war. I agree that real life considerations should, indeed, can not help but come into how you approach games (rather than the ‘it’s just a game, it doesn’t mean anything’ position expressed above), and GOW’s attitude is so close to America’s current foreign policy as to leave a bad taste in the mouth.
But war is war, terrible things happen in all of them, the ones fighting in WW2 were not suddenly angels just because they were fighting against nazis, and lots of real people really died in it. Isn’t it less morally reprehensible to run about in a made up war than a real one? And I’m sure the Locust are very, very bad people, making the COG fight a ‘justified’ war too.
14/05/2008 at 15:22 dhex says:
andrewc: the moral reprehensity (i don’t even think that’s a word) would seem to hinge on how it’s handled. it’s all make-believe at the end of the day.
I don’t get the appeal, except as stated, in a homoerotic way.
seeing as my favorite genre of game is “shoot it in the face a lot” all i can say is awesomeness is cool. but i think a lot of genres are like that, either it clicks with you or it don’t.
14/05/2008 at 15:26 Theory says:
I think you’re way off base with that Miyamoto comparison Kieron. Epic’s games are childish because they are gratuitous, without any irony save that which the player inserts. They’re Scary Movie with no jokes. Miyamoto’s are merely inclusive, Pixar- and Wallace and Gromit-style.
On DMC: I can’t believe it’s not
buttermocked on a regular basis.14/05/2008 at 15:52 Meat Circus says:
@dhex:
But do you like “shoot it in the face a lot” because of its homoerotic overtones?
japanese developers make games for 13 year olds who want to dress up in cardboard costumes, while western developers make games for 13 year olds who wish they were old enough to buy beer.
Western developers make games for 13 year olds who wish they were old enough to buy beer and then be roughly bummed by a burly marine, I think you’ll find.
14/05/2008 at 16:03 Zonderic says:
A little bit of aestheticism goes a long way towards enjoying all those guilty pleasures. Everybody enjoys a little role play, that’s a large part of videogames anyway. Getting a little homoerotic can be quite fun in the same way some gratuitously “heterotic” moments are fun. Not in the sense that you are one or the other, but just tweaking the taste, like lemon in water.
14/05/2008 at 16:08 Pidesco says:
I finally got around to reading this article, and I’d just like to say that there is a fundamental difference in quality between Gears of War and Devil May Cry (3, the only one I’ve played). DMC3 is a complex action game requires skill, technique, and is , basically, fucking hard. GoW, on the other hand, is a lazy piece of piece, than only requires you to periodically jump into to cover to regenerate. GoW is stupidly easy, repetitive and boring. DMC3 isn’t.
14/05/2008 at 16:15 Theory says:
I don’t think anyone is talking about the games’ mechanics, Pidesco.
14/05/2008 at 16:16 cliffski says:
“Perhaps, Cliffski, if you do not see the appeal, you should play it a bit to see.”
Indeed. But is there a PC demo? and how many peggles is it? If its over 20 peggles, I likely wouldn’t bother.
14/05/2008 at 16:17 James T says:
I haven’t played GoW — is it any more nakedly homoerotic than Far Cry? I really wanted to mod the cut-scene audio files in FC so that it was about a closeted man in denial, desperate to escape a gay resort (“Jack, you’ve got to make your way to the gaydar station!” “But it’s so hard!…“). I wouldn’t have had to change the models or enemy taunts at all, the amount of apopletic, gleaming bodybuilders with crewcuts screaming that they were going to tear ‘the guy with the shirt’ a ‘new one’ more than did the trick. Of course, the ‘Trigens’ would’ve spoiled it, but we’re all used to that.
14/05/2008 at 16:17 Saskwach says:
I don’t think I fit your mould Mr Gillen. I hate DMC for it’s juvenile nature as much, if not more than, GoW. Of course I enjoy both as well, for their silly good fun, but it’s hard to get over how gut-wrenchingly stupid they are sometimes.
14/05/2008 at 16:18 cliffski says:
meh looks like they didn’t even bother with a demo. Fuck em.
14/05/2008 at 16:41 Jonathon Halliwell says:
@ Tom Camfield, Xbox Live can sometimes be absolutely disgusting. Last night, there were probably 3 occasions where I ended up shouting abuse at someone because he kept spouting his racist hatred down the mic.
Othertimes it’s people who spam the mic, but for me anyway, I find that hilarious, some people who do it are absolute comedians.
And then again, you can go a whole evening without having any trouble at all, have a good laugh and a chat, and play a good game
14/05/2008 at 18:21 dhex says:
But do you like “shoot it in the face a lot” because of its homoerotic overtones?
i’d like to think my electronic drive to violate everything in the face is a pansexual expression of the rawest will to power.
a while back i’d written a jokey piece for TGQ about effeminaphobia and homoeroticism in far cry – all those masculine manly men shooing each other with bullets from their phallic guns, with those being pierced first dying/submitting to superior masculine power – but far too many people took it seriously. this is both a critique of my poor writing skills and bits of cultural studies wank that have surfaced in the mainstream.
14/05/2008 at 19:16 Radiant says:
For every satire you do need something that isn’t as self conscious and just commits.
I always felt that satire stems from a kind of fear. Of liking something stupid? Maybe.
We went out for a mates birthday the other day and we sung him a very manly happy birthday.
At first we did it with a wink but after a few words it turned into something else; we started belting it out and it ended up as a very mugs a swinging glorious Viking Russian national anthem birthday song.
It was great.
The birds thought we were being funny but the boys knew… we knew.
We went to a lot of kareoke after that but my point being sometimes it’s ok to like stupid man stuff.
But if there was a failing in Gears it wasn’t so much the testosterone overload or the burns victim enemies turning the game into a particularly odd episode of ER or the desaturated bloom excess; it was the lack adrenaline rush.
COD4 did that rush really well but it was strangely absent in GOW.
A result of the repeating game dynamics? Maybe but deffo something they need to up in GOW2.
14/05/2008 at 19:19 Radiant says:
Oh and Gillen it’s Fenix isn’t it?
14/05/2008 at 20:47 Sum0 says:
I’ve been playing Gears of War on PC recently (having played through much of it on 360 when it came out) and, honestly, I hadn’t thought about the over-the-top macho big-guns nature of it all. This is how shooting games are, isn’t it? Men with guns (with, at most, a single token woman) stomping around ruined places shooting aliens with big guns. This is how it’s been since 1993. Personally, I find the sub-LOTR mumbo-jumbo epic fantasy of RPGs more objectionable.
There’s always a thin line between knowingly stupid over-the-topness and genuine emotion: as Radiant says, singing loud drinking songs with inebriated friends is both a bit of dumb fun and genuine male bonding. Likewise, something can be exciting and spectacular without being empty and meaningless. A good case is Apocalypse Now’s famed Ride of the Valkyries scene: I don’t know about you, but I watch it with a mixture of childish excitement at the explosions and machine-gunning and gung-ho blood-thirstiness of the soldiers, and uncomfortable shock at the callousness of the killing and the sheer scale of destruction. If it had been a pure action scene, or a scene designed purely for pathos, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective. By combining the two, you get an uneasy mix that heightens the effectiveness of both. I remember reading an interview with a US soldier around the time of the invasion of Iraq, who mentioned that his company watched Apocalypse Now before the invasion. They weren’t watching it as a comment on the nature of war, they were watching it for the action and excitement of a war film.
I guess this is pretty irrelevant to Gears of War, which has no intelligent subtext, as far as I can tell. The whole thing is a framework for being able to shoot and/or chainsaw nasty monsters. I’m happy with that.
14/05/2008 at 21:27 Scandalon says:
Typo in paragraph 4 of the article. (Don’t know if that’s you or Escapists fault.)
GoW was great fun playing co-op, but the idiocy of the characters lessened it. (Seriously, I wanted to shoot most of the human “allies”…if these were what was left of humanity, then would losing it really been all that bad?)I’m not sure what the difference is, but the machidiocy (SWIDT?)of, say, Predator is great “laugh along w/ your buddies whilst you drink beer”, wheras Gears’ just made me cringe…
14/05/2008 at 22:27 Sören Höglund says:
I still don’t like Gears of War, sorry. Theoretically it should be a masterpiece of homoeroticism. The locust are after all a matriarchy, the Berserkers are who are terribly feared are explicitly referred to as female, and Fenix even says something about getting cooties occasionally after chainsawing someone in two ferchrissakes. But there’s just something about it that rubs me the wrong way. And it’s not the juvenilia per se. I *love* God of War, which is equally ridiculous. Warhammer 40K? Glorious.
It think the key is not having endless monochrome ugliness.
15/05/2008 at 00:07 CplTurboTurd says:
Mr Gillen, having read your work of various kinds over the years, I’ve noticed that you have a peculiar interest in the convoluted, subtle and above all self-conscious elements of how people interpret and consume popular
culture. There’s clearly a fascination with people being drawn towards a particular niche because it fits their sense of self, and the thought processes they go through in order to reject or embrace a particular band/film/game. Phonogram seemed to focus on this a great deal, and I suppose such commentary is appropriate when looking at music, given the extent to which pledging allegiance to a particular genre or band is used as an expression of self, but it’s rarer for it to be as useful when discussing video game tribalism. I often find this analysis to be somewhat tiresome, like my brain is gradually forming a corkscrew shape attempting to keep up with the ‘irony wrapped in an ulterior motive inside a niche’ pattern of the discussion, which is always highly speculative given the psychological nature of the debate, but this article was really terrific.
The line from the Korean gamer asking “Why am I controlling the bad guy?” is so priceless, the most succinct summation of one of the shooter genre’s problems I’ve heard since “Edward Pistolhands” was used to describe the average FPS avatar’s inability to interact with the world with anything other than violence. It hits on what I imagine is the reason for many of the complaints regarding the Gears universe and others like it; people aren’t necessarily making a reactionary and highly personal objection to Gears due to a belief that engaging in its juvenalia is a violation of the sense of self that sees them as an intelligent mature being, it is perhaps a more measured assessment that rejects the game based on a revulsion of values it expresses that the commentator
feels should be universally despised. Ie, the former is a more selfish concern, a desire to maintain a particular sense of identity, whereas the latter is rather more communal, more altruistic, stemming from a belief that such crud is not good for anyone.
I say this because when playing GoW, I had no shame in enjoying it. Not enjoying it for ‘what it is’, not enjoying it ‘in spite of itself’ not enjoying it ‘in an ironic way’. I’ve always found that a bizarre way to engage with anything, the notion that you must have a fixed set of values through which you parse something, and if it doesn’t match them precisely you must find an alternate means of enjoying it that enables you to preserve your idealised sense of self. Perhaps that stance implies a self-consciousness of its own and…oh, we’re back to the corkscrew and Russian doll bit again.
I enjoyed it for its gameplay, which was brilliantly constructed and innovative (yeh, that’s right). My objections to it stemmed from the thorough unlikeability of the games protagonists and the ugliness of the values being implicitly espoused throughout the game. Games, and FPSs in particular, generally are appalling at doing anti-heroes, hence the bafflement of the quoted gamer at the avatar he was controlling. I think it results from the fact that the US produces most FPSs, and the fact that the unpleasant values of such a hugely conservative nation are inevitably expressed through their popular culture, and secondly, the violent nature of shooters themselves, where the easy option for expressing the anti- element of anti-hero is through sadism.
Witness the scene in the third act where your squad comes across a man trapped in the bowels of a factory, which has had the vast majority of its occupants recently slaughtered by the Locusts. Rather than escort him to safety or simply protect him, they sneer with relish at forcing him to help them fulfil their next objective.
He berates them for their attitude and suggests such coercion is typical of the military. Within minutes the unfortunate survivor is killed due to falling into a pit of wretches, which is met by unconcerned silence from Fenix and Santiago.
This is typical of how the Gears behave throughout the game and the mores the game expresses. The military is
to be respected and all those who oppose it are weaklings and cowards who deserve their inevitable grizzly fate. Being a sadistic, insensitive lout is cool and will make you a winner. To me, a well crafted anti-hero is a loveable rogue, whereas the Gears just seem like arseholes, as I suspect they do to anyone who finds American conservative morality completely alien. Hence any criticism I aim at the game isn’t the result of self-conscious desire to convince myself that I’m above consuming juvenalia in an unabashed unironic way, it’s borne out of an entirely sincere and unmanufactured disgust at what’s being inherently advocated by the game’s creators.
15/05/2008 at 00:18 Muzman says:
What’s funny is that this kind of American Macho, let’s call it, has been around in games for a long time it’s just there’s been a bit of a lull as far as big name titles goes. That’s probably since a) Duke Nukem has thus far failed to reappear and b) John Romero gave the whole “Make you my Bitch” “Suck it Down” Pro Wrestling & …uh prison sex ‘tude a bad name.
Otherwise there might have been a more even continuity of macho wank and Gears wouldn’t stand out quite so much, methinks.
I quite like the notion touched on in the article, that these games are the contemporary version of weekend teen adventures involving an arm load of wrestling and Cannon films/Chuck Norris videos. Complaining about Gears’ macho is a bit like wrestling though; there’s a tendency among intellectual middle class types to want to yell ‘it’s fake’ and undermine it all the time. Why? ‘Cause there’s just enough people who seem to take it very seriously.
15/05/2008 at 01:54 Radiant says:
Scandalon it’s not so much idiot characters as much as they are just ‘lunks’.
If you want to see idiocy of character go play Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter [either one] I guarantee you that the bullshit that comes out of both your team mates and YOUR mouth [as Mitchel] will drive you absolutely flag burningly insane.
GRAW… now there is a game devoid of any subtlety, humor or satire that needs a good postmortem kicking [although again it's aces in co-op].
Genre wise GRAW and GOW are pretty much the same [cover then fight] it’s just tonally GRAW gets it so very wrong and comparatively that makes GOW’s bear force one overload seem strangely on point.
btw Bear Force One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twQlpFrm5iM
15/05/2008 at 07:20 Chris Nahr says:
Gears of War brilliantly captures the mood and style of the old Schwarzenegger movies, and anyone who doesn’t like them clearly has no taste so we can safely ignore them.
Also, great point about the double standard regarding Japanese juvenilia. Personally I like everything that’s beautifully silly, whether it’s a misspelled Marcus Phoenix or Dante with too much hairspray. Everything’s better than a game that takes its own fictional military bullshit seriously, like those terribly boring Tom Clancy titles.
But… dude. You wrote “Panzer tank”. That means “Tank tank”. That’s just wrong. Unless of course it’s part of the intentional silliness in which case I suppose it’s okay.
15/05/2008 at 12:13 Kieron Gillen says:
AndrewC: Yeah, there’s a bit of rhetoric there – but when you’re arguing against people who are throwing strawmen around that much, you do feel the need to make a few of your own. But the point you pick up on is absolutely the main one, and I think the one which is most difficult to argue against.
Theory: Mechanistically, I’ll go with you on Miyamoto. But a comparison of the sort of aesthetics Miyamoto games tend to have to Pixar is enormously, ludicrously complimentary to Miyamoto. They’re embarassingly badly written, badly designed, fairy-boy bollocks. The first two hours with any mainstream Nintendo game is me getting over my retch-reflex.
(What I didn’t deal with in the article is that I actually like teenage juvenalia more than I do pre-teen ones… but that’s neither here nor there. In the same way I wouldn’t dismiss Mario because it’s kiddy, people shouldn’t dismiss Gears because it’s teenage. Hell, there’s lots of other reasons to dismiss it, if you wanted to.)
CplTurboTurd: ” I’ve noticed that you have a peculiar interest in the convoluted, subtle and above all self-conscious elements of how people interpret and consume popular culture. ”
Guilty as charged. One note though – I don’t really mean liking it in an ironic way. In some ways, it’s beyond that irony – as a gent in the thread said, getting drunk and singing with your mates in the pub. That’s the bit of the mind Gears tickles.
Conversely, your critique is of Gears is a lot stronger than the IT’S GAY! stuff I was railing against. I don’t necessarily disagree.
KG
15/05/2008 at 14:27 vic says:
Alex with this was spot on:
Doom was brilliant, care-free, wallowing in it’s own filth and adolescent bravado. It was also the product of six mulleted men in a garage, not a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Gears of War is a paunchy middle-aged estate agent doing Megadeth karaoke. It’s not just the games-as-art set who should find it distasteful.
Yeah that sums up my distaste quite well. GOW is an in-direct descendent (in direction and tone) of Doom, but with an extra layer of unnecessary crap. In Doom you are the protagonist, but in Gears of War you are kinda cosplaying as these characters … and while some people might be enjoying some kind of wish fullfillment thing I just found the extra layer of man-cosplay really lame. It took a lot away from the fighting and shooting through dark places that was the draw for me.
For me the game would have been better without Marcus Fenix or Delta Squad. It doesn’t have to be a movie … just me and a friend against the bugs would have been fine – we can make our own stories because your story telling really isn’t that good.
15/05/2008 at 20:50 spd from Russia says:
Excellent article, thank you Kieron.
I dont mind silly machismo of GoW or the ridiculously overdone stlye of wh40k – cause they are done with class and look great from design pov.
16/05/2008 at 01:58 SixStringSamurai says:
gears of war is such a goddamn good game, if you didn’t like gears, it simply means you don’t have any friends to play it with. what’s wrong with having an overtly macho game, it’s badass is what it is, it’s just a game, there’s no need to look in-depth at the political satire or culture commentary that might be the underlying subext. it’s a game.