When it seems like
the entire world is
spiralling irretrievably
towards oblivion,
when long-standing
political institutions
are being undermined
by cronyism and self-serving oligarchs,
when the country is being led into the
melting core of a nuclear reactor by
haunted scarecrows, and the planet
itself is beginning to crumble to ash
beneath our blistered feet, there is only
one thing that keeps me awake at night.
Not inequality, nor rising sea levels, nor
the collapse of the travel agency Thomas
Cook, nor those mutant mosquitoes that
escaped from a laboratory in Brazil last
week and cannot be stopped. No, what
keeps me tossing and turning in the shed
where I sleep is that sultry maiden herself,
our old friend videogames.
More specifically, everything that’s
wrong with them. Each night I stare at
the ceiling – well, the wooden underside
of the shed’s roof that I call a ceiling- unable to enjoy our beautiful hobby
because I am haunted by the persistent
gaming tropes and clichés that besmirch
even the medium’s greatest and least
smirchable works. I’m talking about
unskippable stealth sections, torches
that flicker whenever there’s a ghost
nearby, emails that mention the specific
four-digit code for the weapons locker
that’s in the next room, times when you
get knocked unconscious and have to
go through a level naked and armed
only with a stapler. In my long tenure as
OXM’s Fixer, I have been called upon to
clean up some of the worst examples
of hackneyed game design and despite
everything else happening in the world,
my mission must continue.
The problem
This month, in an attempt to distract
myself from the grim state of current
affairs, I’ve set my fixing sights on one of
the classics of the genre. Don’t you justCountless thousands, I bet. Most games
are just this – lobbing a beer bottle
over a security guard’s head so you can
crouch-walk past him real quick – over
and over again, interspersed with a few
boss fights and poker minigames just to
break things up a bit.
You can picture the scene now,
because you’ve lived it tens of
thousands of times. You’re there,
silhouetted in the dark, holding up a
beer bottle like it’s a BAFTA for Best
Original Screenplay, a translucent arc
indicating where the beer bottle will
go once you press the all-important
bottle-throwing button. And there’s the
guard, illuminated by fluorescent light,
muttering something about how much
it sucks to be working for the bad guy.
Then he faces away, and in that moment
you chuck the bottle at a broken fridge.
He swings back, says, “What was that
sound?” and then you scoot for the exit
like a massive crab while he’s looking the
wrong way, afraid to uncrouch in case
your walking sound is louder than the
bottle’s smashing sound. You will do this
seven more times in this warehouse.The solution
Look, perhaps this one doesn’t need
fixing. In a world that is rapidly changing
around us, there is comfort and
sanctuary in the familiar. And if games
suddenly stopped including empty glass
bottles that you could pick up and throw,
in favour of some innovative new method
of evading guards, we might lose more
than we gain.
Tropes are a time-honoured means
for us all to connect over the things we
understand. They are not the refuge of
the lazy game designer, but a shared
joke, the handshake of a friend, the
phone call from a sister, the thumbs up
from a stranger on a bad day.
Except for escort missions, which are
still universally shite. QSteve also writes for City A.M.hate those times when you need to get
past a guard, and so you throw an empty
glass bottle at the far side of the room
so that the guard goes to investigate
the noise, leaving you with just enough
time to sneak past him undetected?
How many times have you done that?INSIDER OPINION
Steve chucks his recycling over a fence to escape the police
The Fixer
Steve Hogarty is...
“I am haunted by
persistent
gaming tropes
and clichés”
018 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE