Archive
Metal Gear Solid and Games as Social Commentary
In preparing for my presentation at the College English Association conference in St. Louis this week, I’ve been kicking around a lot of ideas of games as a brand of social commentary. Specifically, I’ve been analyzing Grand Theft Auto as a combination pastiche/satire that lovingly mocks great pieces of American pop culture to point out the vices of that culture in general. I’ll post that presentation up here after I give it (Thursday afternoon).
In a similar vein, I’ve always considered Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid games to be extremely good pieces of postmodern fiction set into game form. Kojima lets the player work his way through different scenarious using whatever skills and hardware Snake is allowed, and ties those abilities thematically back to his story arc. The character is a combination of stealth, intelligence, caution tempered with daring, and emotional reserve. All those qualities are woven into both the cutscenes and the gameplay segments, turning them into something of a mutual metadiscourse continuously commenting on these themes and how they are addressed within different segments of the game. One might justly criticize the series’ indulgence with cutscene length, especially given the way narrative components are more strongly tied into gameplay scenarios in current games. But little of those cutscenes is wasted.
The opus has always served as a warning of the very problems videogames so widely represent for modern culture: the potential that our reliance on and affinity for technological advancement might lead at least to our dehumanization, at worst to our collapse. Touching on subjects like genetic manipulation, nuclear arms, political and cultural loyalties, individual identity in an increasingly networked world, and the simple perils of war without consequences often makes Kojima’s games seem like some of the more topical and relevant narrative discourse on modern life. Read more…
Categories
Blogroll
- Hogwarts Professor
- Image and Narrative, and online e-Journal
- Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
- Letters from a Perilous Realm
- Manfred Jahn’s “Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative”
- Mick Parsons
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- The Daily Dish
- The Don DeLillo Society
- The Hogs Head
- The Hogs Head at Facebook
Comics and Graphic Novels
Comrades in Visual Rhetoric
Links for Games and Ludology
- Center for Computer Games Research at IT University of Copenhagen
- Confessions of an Aca-Fan
- Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture
- Gamasutra
- Game Journal: Professional Academic Forum for Games and Game Theory
- Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research
- Game-Research
- Internet Gaming Network
- Kojima Productions
- Loading…
- Ludology.org
- Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab
- The Ludologist
Twitter Feed
- RT @CarrieMuskat: Baseball historian Ed Hartig notes Wrigley Field is the only current Major League stadium that Jackie Robinson played a g… 5 days ago
- RT @JoshuaMZeitz: Paul Ryan now enjoys the peace of mind that when he turns 50—in less than two years—he will enjoy a defined-benefits pens… 1 week ago
- RT @TeaPainUSA: What we really need to see is the nondisclosure agreement Vladimir Putin made Donald Trump sign. 4 weeks ago
- RT @EmrgencyKittens: 😍 https://t.co/7lNdcXRuME 1 month ago
- RT @sundogtweets: Passionate about marketing, project management and building relationships? Come work with us in #Fargo as an Associate Pr… 1 month ago
Recent Comments