(mashedmarket)

I’ve long been a proponent of highly sylized video games. This probably has much to do with the fact that I cut my teeth during the NES era. After all, visible pixels don’t exactly lend themselves to realism. But now that the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 are on the scene, everything’s beginning to change. The extent to which recent games have approached reality (speaking in terms of both art assets and physics engines) has been quite astonishing. Though even some of today’s most valiant attempts still fail to deliver in one respect or another, gaming may be on the verge of a new golden age. Or perhaps it’s just me coming around to something others have known forever. In any case, over the last few years, I’ve tended to appreciate fanciful, interpretive games. Stuff like Beyond Good & Evil or The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.  But throughout 2008, I’ve begun to see real merit in attempting to closely model reality.

Last week, I wrote about some of my frustrations with Grand Theft Auto IV. I should’ve waited until I had finished that last mission; as is so often the case with games, my quibbles ebbed away just as the credits started rolling. Staring out over that vast and beautiful cityscape, praise for its startling worldliness began welling up from some mysterious and visceral part of my brain. It was an unexpected and emotional moment. Liberty City has this effect on people. 

The particular brand of realism on exhibit in Rockstar’s vision is somewhat superficial; poke around a little bit and you’ll see that non-player character reactions aren’t all that dynamic. In fact, almost nothing in the game behaves exactly as it would in reality. However, despite this lack of depth, there is an astonishing breadth to the world these developers created. Players see, hear, and sometimes use political advertisements, police brutality, and public transportation. Part of the reason this series has been so controversial has to do with the fact that mainstream pundits can’t seem to wrap their heads around where the epic satire ends. By refusing to shy away from taboo subjects, Grand Theft Auto IV turns aspects of our culture upside down. Engaging with the game entails a trip to an alternate universe, and we return to our own with a slightly different outlook.

Such is the power of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Infinity Ward’s masterful and much-heralded recreation of eerily-familiar gunship footage proves just how dehumanizing contemporary tools of destruction can be. What’s more, the game draws some of its level design from a real-world location in the Zone of Alienation.

Though most of us have no desire to participate in the above experiences or visit such dangerous places ourselves, we are able to use gaming as an increasingly authentic vehicle for understanding extraordinary circumstances. Ultimately, playing realistic games grants us perspective on subjects that might otherwise remain regrettably one-dimensional. Better still, our actions and reactions in these simulated worlds can teach us a great deal who we are as people.