The point of no return

I never played Spec Ops: The Line, but I did binge a few months ago on its TVtropes page, and I also read several articles and interviews about and with the developers. This is a game that took considerable inspiration from Apocalypse Now and its own predecessor, Heart of Darkness; unsurprisingly, such a pedigree resulted in a much darker and more self-aware take on the standard military shooter than is common.

What stuck with me was a comment made by one of the executives or produces from the company - one of the people whose job depends on making a popular and financially successful product - who said in an interview that the game was intentionally designed so that there would come a point where the only morally defensible option available to the player would be to turn off the game and stop playing.

I thought that a fascinating concept at the time, but having just read ALL the spoilers on TVtropes, I didn't feel the need to buy it and see for myself. But now I can attest to that phenomenon, because for the first time, I have shelved a video game because of my discomfort with what it is calling on me to do.

From the trenches of #GamerGate

EDIT: I thought the argument was over, but it's flared up again, so I've added some more of the arguments below.

Republished from an argument with a friend-of-a-friend on said friend's facebook wall. The person with whom I was arguing professed not to be a member or supporter of GamerGate, but held some very GamerGate-ish views of Anita Sarkeesian, including, in the preceding posts, arguing that the reason she 'attacked' video games was to intentionally draw hate with which to increase her own popularity and victimhood.

My response after the jump:

There's a definite downside to being a gamer these days

I realized something the other day. All my life, I have self-identified first and foremost as a reader. I took an obscure pride in being the kid from whom the teachers always had to confiscate books in class, and even after I stopped doing that, I still majored in English in large part because that's what someone who loves to read ought to do. So it was disconcerting to realize that I spend considerably more time and energy playing video games, reading about video games and thinking about video games than I do reading (even counting reading news stories online, which I do), thinking about reading or following the publishing industry.

On its own, that's a little sad. While there definitely are video games of such richness and artistry to elevate the player's perception of the world in the same way that a good book will do, they are few and far between in the game industry, and the vast majority of my gaming time is spent on games with much lower culture capital to offer: MMOs, match-based multiplayer games and single player games with stories that exist to get you to the next gameplay objective. These games have their own sort of value - in particular, the social aspect of these online games is a big part of my life these days - but it's not the same value I'd be getting from intentionally seeking out and exposing myself to the best stories told by the best thinkers.

So that's a cause for regret, but a relatively small one. A bigger issue is that if there was ever a time not to want to think of oneself as a gamer, this is it.

(Unhappy words about GamerGate after the jump.)