Bacchus1105

I'm a 1L, also at a top 4. You may be right about the stigma ... and I certainly agree, as I posted above, that most people probably don't follow politics/law/etc. But I also suggested that RPG fans are not really a representative sample. I see plenty of people playing games, but it's mostly things like Mario. That's a whole different category of "gamer," and not one comparable to what we're talking about.

Points well taken. And let me say that in retrospect, "not insightful" was a poor choice of words to express "I disagree," so I hope you weren't offended. I know I get sick of reading that kind of haughtiness on game forums, and I can only imagine that feeling is magnified for you. Obviously "not now" is not the same as "not ever," but I'm not sure the drama/games analogy holds up. Plays have always been a form of mass entertainment, and even the most crude of, say, Plautus' works were considered "low comedy" but were enjoyed by a "high" audience. My point is to say that because of the nature of the medium, I'm not sure games will evolve the same way. I may have misunderstood your original post, or maybe I just have NWN2 on the brain, but I understood your argument to be about fantasy RPGs. FPS games in general and military-style games in particular have a much broader audience - you're no longer talking about us nerds. Maybe you can make that work, and make it sell, but it's a fine line to walk. What I meant by saying I wouldn't play that sort of game, is that I come to play, not to be preached at. To go back to your parallel, plays were never (go all the way back to Aristophanes) NOT about moral lessons, and their descendent movies carry the same weight. With games, you're not just talking about complicating the same general themes, you're talking about a complete revolution in what's acceptable content for the medium. I'm not sure A Doll's House falls into that category - I would say it's a moral lesson adapted for an apathetic postmodern society, but no less of a moral lesson. Creating a "scandal" is no indicator - Aristophanes' "The Clouds" may have gotten Socrates whacked. Portraying a "realistic" environment maybe to a greater depth, but I'm not convinced that makes a story revolutionary. The scandal from Ibsen's work came from the position it took on the theme issue, not the general theme it picked. As for topics being "tired," I think sanctity and diabolism in the Early Modern World would be slightly more obscure than a blanket statement about evil corporations. Forget law students, anyone who reads the newspaper is buffeted with stories on poverty and corporate greed. To make myself clear, I in no way specialize in those areas, and I would have said the same things about them before law school. Still, your point may stand that "most people" don't see that. Most people don't read the newspaper or Time magazine, or care to. I would guess, and you'd know better than I, that fantasy RPG players on average are more educated than the general public on average. FPS players, or however you classify Splinter Cell type games, probably not. I'm not familiar with the specific games you mention, so I can't really speak to that except in very general terms. I still believe that, games being games, tackling a political issue in any kind of depth will be either boring, or missed/ignored in passing, save perhaps a few very specific issues (but really, what can you say about terrorism or genocide in a FPS type game without being a cliche?). Games are, I suppose, becoming more mainstream, but (speaking only from personal experience) most people have no interest in them. If that changes, maybe the content can change. I'm not so confident it can work the other way (i.e. can't see non-gamers playing games because of the strong themes) because unfortunately, to serious people who place value on that kind of debate, there is often a stigma attached to the PC/console game media. Take law students - a class of 120 people (myself excluded) laughed at one poor guy who, in passing, admitted to playing Age of Empires in high school. That stigma may change, but I doubt it.

I disagree, I don't find Mr. Sawyer's comments particularly insightful. Firstly, a topic's having been overdone does not necessarily make it less interesting, at least for me. Of course certain ideas like good v. evil and nature v. technology are overdone - they had value for the particular medium of fantasy RPGs in the first place, and are strong motifs of the work of Tolkien, from which much of the DnD/etc. world is gleaned. All that is beside the point. I'm afraid that if you want to be an instrument of social change and decry racism etc., Mr. Sawyer, you've chosen the wrong field. You should have been a civil rights lawyer, or a journalist, or even a pure fiction writer. Games are ... well, games. It's easy to be swept up in the world of those who are obsessed with them, who take them so seriously as to actually try to extract lasting moral lessons from them, and perhaps think they have long-term value in that sense. I'm afraid I'll have to argue that they don't. They are, as you said, escapism, but you say that as though that is a bad thing that will eventually change. Unfortunately, to be a "serious" gamer in the usual sense of the word requires a kind of time commitment most people can't afford. Movies or even popular TV shows are much more accessible, require less exclusive attention, and are more efficient in delivering a message. As a side note, I don't particularly think the topics you mentioned (corps v. labor, racism, religion) are any more fresh than the ones you describe as trite. Maybe in the gaming world they are, but for many of us (I'm a law student, for example) that stuff gets beaten into our heads through academia and journalistic media. I do think you might have a point about "exploring" themes rather than dictating that one side is the good guy. Movies that do that, for example, tend to be more interesting. Perhaps one way to do this, more easily executed in games, is to make a surprise switch about who the "good guy" is, or even make it so there IS no good guy. I'm not a big-time gamer like most people who post on these forums, but I don't think I've encountered a game where the "technology" side is actually the sympathetic one (BGII "Trademeet" comes to mind, but that was a temporary "twisting" of the nature side, which in the long term was of course the better), or where the laborers are actually greedy sloths and the corporate exec is fair in his policies. In other words, I think what's really boring you is the cliched nature of game narrative. Again, though, you're catering to an audience that often doesn't want much more. I sympathize, but this is the field you've chosen, and I don't think you'll see change - games simply aren't the forum for the kind of debates you're discussing. I know I wouldn't want to play the kind of game you describe.