How are the narrative roles of hero/villain constructed in popular video games such as the 'Call of Duty' and why are they more complicated than in earlier texts in the war genre?
“discussing gaming narratives is to see the relationship between the gaming world and the real world. This explains the historically the theories of visual culture to such relationship with the problematics of representation” This quote can widely relate to the purpose of this essay which is to see how narrative roles are constructed in popular video games such as Call of Duty and how they can be challenged. This essay intends to look into a particular franchise known as Call Of Duty which due to its audience of primarily young adults include controversial material, portrayal of criminal behavior, gory scenes an graphical violence. The Call Of Duty franchise is one which can revenue in the hundred millions with its newest release ‘Black Ops’ produced and distributed at £130million and receiving a gross revenue of £330million in the first 5 days of its release, suggesting its increasing success.
The game focuses around many different protagonists who attempt to rise through the ranks of the criminal underworld. The antagonists are commonly characters that have been betrayed, the protagonist or their organization, or who has the most impact impeding their progress. I chose to look at video games since I believe their impact is far worse than movies because the audience are intimate and interactive with violence, they are mentally carrying out effects of violence. “Video games have also been studied for links to addiction and aggression.” I have explored a number of studies which have either have found that video games do not contribute to these problems or furthermore several groups have argued that there are few if any scientifically proven studies to back up these claims, and that the video game industry has become an easy target for the media to blame for many modern day problems.
However this is not always blamed on the media. I believe that the portrayal of narrative roles throughout gaming has become a factor that encourages young adults to strengthen this violent behaviour. “Those people who need that trigger, that little push”. So if an individual is already involved in antisocial behaviour the media will reinforce your violent behaviour and encourage you to commit a crime. I agree with this statement I believe it depends on an individual and whether they have come from a stable background. If so they will be able to deal with it, however you can become a bystander as you can get desensitised; this is when repeated exposure of violence makes the audience less sensitive.
While most debate has focused on how the female gender is portrayed in video games, little has been said about how the male gender is represented. It is important to discuss both genders as each play video games. It could be argued that it is more important to discuss the portal of males in video games as they are, statistically, the largest demographic playing video games.
“Unfortunately there has not been much literary or critical analysis of the representations of males in video games”. This is a weakness in gender theory and hopefully will be tended to.
Audiences use this as pleasure and can be beneficial to them. "It has been argued that the aggressive content in video games could allow players to release their stress and aggression in a non destructive way, and, in fact, would have the effect of relaxing them" . This suggests that although some theorists believe that video games like Call of Duty can cause high levels of addiction and aggression, it can challenge this theory and allow audiences to pull away from reality so that they can relieve stress and tension.
A quote by Stuart Hall, 'Hollywood consistent use of cultural norms as narrative devices' suggesting that its normal to see the same narrative roles throughout media texts likes gaming, the dominant white male as the hero and narrative roles in gaming. This can have a large effect on the way in which audiences portray war genre games and can be down to the institutions way they portray their games. ’Some Individuals/institutions will always have greater power to portray how to react on situation’ (Howard Becker).This suggests that issues and debates such as 'moral panics' will continue to shape the way in which the audience will portray power. Also how some institutions will act on moral panics and use scares such as 9/11 as a selling point.
However this can also be blamed by the institution because by the Call Of Duty franchise showing its audience one narrow type of imagery to war genre games, audiences are expected to believe it. ‘To say we may judge what is or is not real based on what is shown to us’ . This fits into my title as it would suggest how the audience portrays narrative roles. How if games and television shows Muslims for example to be terrorists and evil all the time or the 'other' than the audience will begin to believe this.
Narrative stereotypes also have representation of “human behaviour in a new urban environment” Initially narrative roles in the Call Of Duty franchise are stereotyped as a physically powerful British/American male, who come from a high economical background and are very intelligent A degree of unrestricted narrative, the ‘other half', can also be used to effectively build suspense, as the audience are anticipating the events to come, of which the character has no knowledge..”The born criminal made existing ethnic and racial categories. The rhetoric of class was often coupled with nativism and buttressed by science” More recently narrative roles in war genre games are noticed to have become the ethnic other who becomes violent and irrational.
Censorship is a factor in which media blames for the negative effects of the war genre games. The game industry is controlled by the BBFC, British Board of Film Classification, who are responsible for classifying ratings of video games. These are concerns include, sex, violence, criminal or harmful actions that can easily be imitated, horror, and drugs.“Regardless of the impetus behind regulation, there is evidence that suggests a failure of existing ratings systems to serve their purpose. Some games’ sales have been boosted by violence warnings and negative publicity ” suggesting that any product you attempt to limit access to, will only cause more desire to obtain, therefore in some way banning games does not work. Also research showed that game players under the age of 18 reported that they get parents permissions 83% of the time before purchasing a game.
Some theorists believe that the audience are passive and will immediately blame the media as a consequence, being responsible for all anti social behaviour. Computer games harden the youth to attend tasks of murder by simulating the killing of hundreds of opponents in a single game.
A highly respected theories, Valdamir Propp also had his theory of narrative roles and said that,‘ characters and actors have the narrative fuctions of villiens hero doner father and false hero.‘ This quote suggests that there is always a narrative role in any action and would be based on these forms of roles. This is relative in gaming as each role has a link to a character in the Call of Duty franchise. The hero may realize the need for the challenge and may view it as an irritation that is holding up the main goal. Importantly, they must show the qualities of the hero, facing up difficulties as we all have to face tests in our own lifetimes. At last the villain is defeated in some way, often through direct combat, in which they may be killed or spared after pleading.
Most of the films we see at the cinema are narrative films, films that tell a story. Even films which are factual often employ story methods to get this point across, therefore we are so steeped in the narrative tradition that we approach a film with certain expectations, whether we know anything about the story or not. There would be characters that interact with each other. To see a series of incidents, which are connected with each other’s problems and/or conflicts. Then ending to resolve the action or cast new light on what has happened.
The plot does not always show us events in strict chronological order i.e. the order in which they would have happened in real life. For instance, sometimes a flashback technique is used to show us what happened in the past, or less frequently, a flash forward to events which have not yet occurred.
The companies who create these games also create simulation games for the army training them to shoot and kill, which believe it is effective. Ex-army psychologist Dave Grossman blames movies and video games. He believes films have desensitised children to the consequence of representations in video games have taught them how to portray characters and the violence teach them how to handle a gun. Psychiatrist Serge Tisseron argues that “just because a film has a murder scene it doesn’t mean people are going to commit the act… That overstates the power of the image and underestimates the role of parents.”
Fazan Mohammed, The British Muslim Forum, argues a historical and moral opinion: "A lot of people make the excuse that this is just entertainment”, but Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of the Nazi Germany said, ' However Nicky Campbell states; “hasn’t there been more murder, mayhem, controversy and war caused by people reading the holly scriptures than watching/ playing this video game“
Video games such as Call of Duty have continuously used male characters throughout its series of games. Therefore may appeal to males as the male character becomes aggressive, this is through the biological mindset of males in general, whereas woman in this case tend to be a passive audience in game play, not being as violent but more calm and rational. Also by using a first person shooting game like Call of Duty, institutions are able to let the player roam around as the character making then kill who and what they want which allows them to ’Interact with the virtual environments in a more personal way’ . This means that they are then being able to 'players an opportunity to practice violent scripts' this causes players to feel the versions of depicting war and makes characters think that they are just as violenct in games as they are in real life. “The tension the audience feels brings them as close as they’re going to get to the real thing”
Some theorists believe that the audience are passive and will immediately blame the media as a consequence, being responsible for all anti social behaviour. Computer games harden the youth to attend tasks of murder by simulating the killing of hundreds of opponents in a single game. The way narrative roles are constructed in the Call of Duty franchise cause its audience to believe that there
In relations to theories, the Call of Duty franchise uses a typical way of appealing to the audience. They use the hypodermic needle theory which suggests that the audience are passively shown what to believe and how to portray the sequence they see in video games. “The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences”. One of the ways this is done is through making the audience believe that the narrative roles constructed are the general way in which heroes and villains act within war and violence. For example with Call of Duty, the main character is predominantly a white male, tough, brave and smart allowing them to kill many of the opposition. Whereas the villain is shown to be a stereotypical ‘other’, usually Russian/Muslim, these characters are slow, not very smart and irrational. Institutions use the hypodermic needle to suggest to the audience that this is the way to portray heroes and villains in the war genre.
Cultivation theory is also a theory in which fits into why the way narrative roles are constructed have become so successful in video games. “The Cultivation theory in its most basic form, suggests that television is responsible for shaping, or ‘cultivating’ viewers’ conceptions of social reality” . The combined effect of massive television exposure by viewers over time subtly shapes the perception of social reality for individuals and, ultimately, for our culture as a whole. This also shows that by showing panics on television such as the 9/11 scares and the institiuions such as ‘Fox news’ and ‘CNN’ showing the American war heroes as saviours and anyone else as a villain, it means that consumers and game players of war genre games like Call of Duty are believed to think in the same way. However the new game play of ‘Calll of Duty Modern Warefare2’ level ‘No Russian’ despite the violence on Russians allow the character to play as a villain, allowing them to see the American soldiers and police as the villain. This challenges the ways in which the cultivation theory can apply to the study.
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