Over the past few
decades, this fixer
of videogames has
engineered innovative
new alternatives
to everything from
exploding red barrels
and mislaid audio logs, to those horrible
missions where you have to protect a
dumb scientist who would much rather
hurl themselves into some spikes than
safely reach the evacuation zone.
From up here in my OXM-branded blimp
I can see for thousands of miles, way out
across the landscape of gaming, with
all of its strange problems and curious
frustrations. Nothing can hide from my
scrutiny, because I own a telescope
capable of seeing through rocks.
It wasn’t always this way. Before I set
out on my thankless mission to improve
the industry, videogames were primitive,
barely playable things. Rather than arrive
on a convenient disc, each game had to
be painstakingly chiselled out of a single
block of raw data and then shipped to
your house on a horse-drawn barge.
There was no such thing a saved game,
instead your progress was recorded on
the electoral register. And instead of
unlocking achievements, progressing
through games would add penalty points
to your driver’s licence until eventually
the police came around to arrest you.
It was a confusing time to be a gamer,
but by addressing each of these issues,
I have shaped our hobby into the almost
flawless format we love today. However,
there is still work to be done, and still
kinks to be ironed out. And this month my
steaming hot kink iron is barrelling down
on one of the most well-worn aspects
in games. A scenario so overdone that
you’ve become numb to its presence. I
am talking, of course, about war.The problem
As a species, we have an innate desire
to murder one another in our millions,
an overpowering compulsion to layfashioning vast tapestries depicting
our favourite bits of war, with arrows
going through eyes and people getting
skewered on the ends of spears so that
all their guts come out.
We are so creatively fixated on this
topic that even the very first games
were all about war. A war against
aliens in Space Invaders. A war against
a rival tennis player in Pong. A war
against cherries in Bubble Bobble. As
a theme, war has endured decades
of technological progress, with each
generation of consoles depicting it in
ever more realistic terms. The latest
Call Of Duty is the most unflinching
simulation of war yet seen, a game so
horny for guns and death that the fug of
virtual testosterone risks condensing on
the inside of the television screen and
destroying the electronics.
I’ve nothing against violence in games,
but if an alien civilisation were to take
a look at how we like to unwind... let’s
just say they wouldn’t be falling over
themselves to invite us round for alien
tea. They’d put us on a special register.The solution
For every game about a war we need
a sequel that’s set within the United
Nations, where you play the role of
the head of a committee charged with
leading the enquiry into the conduct
of the belligerent nations, in order to
ascertain the lawfulness of the conflict.
In this manner, we would all gain a
greater appreciation of the seriousness
and far-reaching ramifications of war,
and be less inclined to start them on our
sofas on a Tuesday evening.
The game would take on average four
years to complete, and you’d be unable
to start any new games about war until
the legal process had been entirely
resolved. Any attempt to do so would
send your address to The Hague, where
you will be charged as a war criminal. QSteve also writes for City A.M.waste to entire civilisations on the whim
of an imperialist ruling class and with
zero regard for the sanctity of human
life. We cannot get enough of war, it’s
our absolute favourite. When we’re not
having actual wars we’re writing books
and films about how cool wars are, orINSIDER OPINION
Steve questions why we’re so fixated on murdering one another
The Fixer
Steve Hogarty is...
“We cannot get
enough of war,
it’s our absolute
favourite”
018 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE