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Space Invaders at 40: 'I tried soldiers, but shooting people was frowned upon'
In the 1970s, as Tomohiro Nishikado began to consider designing his next arcade game, the video game medium was in a fledgling state. With few rules to follow or break, the pioneering game developer had the creative freedom he needed to build a true cultural phenomenon. The game Nishikado was starting to plot out in his mind was Space Invaders, the iconic shoot 'em up that is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
"I had no idea the game would become so popular it would become a social phenomenon," Nishikado remembers. "I was totally taken aback." Despite his surprise, the game designer had certainly crafted something of great cultural significance.
[...] Nishikado linked points to in-game progression and introduced the concept of saving scores to the arcade cabinet. That framed score as a signifier of skill and survival, and lured players back to a given arcade cabinet to beat the tallies of others who had played before them; a convention that established competitive gaming. "My initial intention was not to create a game that centred on scoring mechanics, but rather one where players would compete to see who could clear the most waves," he explains. "However, making the UFO's score a mystery led to players becoming very conscious of their score and eventually they started competing on that basis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @06:57AM (12 children)
There was a game I played with a group that insisted it was nice and fluffy. They insisted that killing is bad and messy but were somehow OK with killing goblins on a regular basis.
I asked if goblins were simply acceptable targets like the untouchable castes, what got me was when they answered that "the game would be too dark".
No, I have no problems with violent resolutions, simply noting a strange disconnect.
If you've made up your mind to use violence to resolve conflicts, then why are some targets acceptable but not others? How would it make it "dark"?
Why would it be frowned upon to commit imaginary violence on *some* imaginary beings but not other imaginary beings?
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Wednesday June 06 2018, @09:52AM
Seems to be a refusal to acknowledge ones own nature as a being capable of violence. "Goblins aren't real, so the violence I am exerting on them isn't real, so I am not violent." If you replace imaginary Goblins with something more real world, the cognitive dissonance becomes harder to sustain.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Wednesday June 06 2018, @10:19AM (2 children)
If you've made up your mind that it's sometimes ok to use violence to resolve conflicts, then that still does not mean you have to generalize that to each and every conflict, does it?
War / fight scenarios have proven a rich framework for designing games (much before video games, even), but yes, some people will be less happy to embrace a violent scenario than others. While violence in a game and real world violence are something very different, essentially the same factors will make the use of violence seem more or less acceptable/enjoyable. So when designing a game, you can tweak those.
For instance it's an age old and proven technique to depict your enemies as "evil" and possibly even non-human. Game designers are at a natural advantage over real life warlords, in this respect, as they can easily make a credible claim that the adversaries are in fact non-human - e.g. goblin. Another technique will be to tweak the level of abstraction. For instance it's much "easier" to push a button that will cause a deadly explosion many miles away, than to kill a human face to face. Games working with the latter scenario can still tweak "distance" by adding or removing blood, expressions of pain, death throes, etc.
Not all tastes are alike and not all games are alike. Some make a big point of adding as much blood as possible. Others build on the concept of playing an "evil" role (not necessarily in combination with violence), e.g. playing a thief, drug baron, or dictator. But all such elements are going to render the game less enjoyable, or even unacceptable to some.
Further, as an individual you can experiment with the threshold of "nasty" that you find enjoyable in a game, quite flexibly, but such experimentation is more difficult in a group, where - again - tastes differ. So in a group context it really makes some sense to draw a line somewhere (such as "no killing of humans"), and stick to that, without demanding that the rules be strictly logical (an unattainable standard).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Wednesday June 06 2018, @10:30AM (1 child)
the irony (if there is one) is that playing video games long enough to be *good* ( I'm terrible!), probably makes you physically unfit to carry out the same actions in real life.
So there's security for you - a giant staircase to reach a venue , and you need a background check to use the elevator....
caffeine++ :-)
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday June 06 2018, @11:42AM
Are you sure about the staircase and are you a lady?
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday June 06 2018, @11:34AM
Probably the same disconnect that makes you a murderer if you shoot your neighbour to get his indigo jeans but makes you a hero if you shoot someone a couple of cities away and someone gives you a coloured ribbon for it.
Basically it comes down to that the further away (mentally) from "it could have been me" something is the easier it is to justify.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:28PM (1 child)
We can stop now though I will continue for the sake of thoroughness. Games routinely have contrived moral conditions. Most games have contrived conflicts. In the real world, morally it would be better to restructure the system to eliminate the conflict (or at least make resolution of the conflict more mutually beneficial). In games, the conflict and its resolution (in an entertaining way) is the purpose of the game. Get rid of the conflict and there would be no reason to play the game.
Imaginary violence != violence.
You've described most humans for the past million years. So why not have games, particularly those hearkening back to our primitive days, occasionally use that old mentality?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @03:01AM
We're talking about inflicting imaginary violence on imaginary beings. No actual violence were committed.
I don't know, were the humans of the past imaginary?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:08PM
These tropes have been deconstructed in various works. especially with the recent "monster musume" craze in Japan. Your waifu can be a goblin or orc now.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:47PM (2 children)
How about "It's acceptable to imagine violence in a game against imaginary creatures, precisely so I get it out of my system and DON'T think about doing it to real people"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @03:06AM (1 child)
It's an imaginary game with imaginary violence on imaginary beings. People can't tell imagination and reality apart anymore huh?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 08 2018, @01:31PM
We can't have it anymore. We could be training cold-blooded killers! Gotta ban.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday June 07 2018, @07:46PM
Somehow it always comes down to skin color [giantitp.com].