Rock, Paper, Shotgun

15/07/2011 at 23:22 ribidons says:

The matter is subjective. There are going to be people who are “too close” to the problem in one way or another. They’ll see this kind of thing as either the glorification or trivialization of a nasty, brutish bit of history, and they’ll see it as insensitive. Even less healthily, it’s possible that someone out there is using this to psychologically whitewash the historical events on their own behalf, or as a way to play out or reinforce more genuine violent fantasies. Additionally, it’s possible that the game somehow frames specific people in unfair ways, which bears all the normal problems of any revisionist historical work. None of this suggests that the work ought to be quashed, removed from the Internet, or some other nonsense, but merely that, depending on the plaintiff in question, setting-related complaints might be neither baseless nor irrational.

There IS something a little different between this and, say, a Grand Theft Auto game. In GTA, the social dysfunction (mostly) circles tightly around the protagonist and fellow “criminals.” If guns are blazing, it’s because “bad people” (whether the avatar, gangsters or crooked cops) are stirring up trouble. GTA’s society, mostly, puts on a show of functionality. Joggers, white collar workers, and other commuters abound and more-or-less appear to be going about their own business. Civilization plods forward. In a setting like M&B Glasgow, anarchic violence seems to be a societal norm. Even if the player character avoids conflict, the “ordinary folk” will continue beating each other to pieces with shovels and street signs. There doesn’t appear to be a pacifist/avoidant “bystander” faction on the field, and the police simply appear to be another power-hungry, violent force. Again, mothballing the possible critique of state authority, the setting is simply less compatible with more moderate statist views of society, which depend tremendously on a mostly-compliant populace. And, there is a seed of truth in there: no imaginable current police force can peaceably quell a general uprising. The implicit question, I suppose, is the same old chestnut: are people, at heart and without coercion, benign or malevolent to their fellow folk?

I agree, there’s almost certainly no real harm in this. And, anyone saying, “This ought not exist!” is off-base. Simultaneously, the statement, “This mod sucks!” could be quite accurate. I do have a classic M&B serial key somewhere around here, but I will admit that I have not loaded this mod, so all I have to comment on are the videos. Spectator violence is a social ill that society ought to discourage, as unlike various forms of politically-driven violence, it almost certainly has no productive motive. Even so, this mod, when viewed from across the Atlantic, mostly seems humorous. If I were going to get upset about perspectives in games, I’d be more inclined to rail against, say, Christian/Muslim supremacist or heavily racist settings, because there actually do exist modern groups practicing violence on those terms. I don’t see football rioting as a long-term dangerous trend, but merely an intermittent social failure. As such, I don’t see much harm in this.

Finally, I may very well be misinterpreting this; I am not a student of the region’s history. If hooliganism has some serious socio-political aspirations or impact I’m unaware of, then it’s possible that certain standing critiques may apply. To be a bit crass, my naive take on hooliganism indicates that it is less a social movement than a passtime: hooligans aren’t sincerely hoping to “break the state” or the like, but merely to indulge in running wild. So, if I’m off-base, I’m off-base.