Critical Investigation

“Discussing gaming narratives is to see the relationship between the gaming world and the real world. This explains the historical theories of visual culture, such as the relationship and the problems of representation”

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?

This essay intends to look into a franchise known as Call of Duty (COD) which due to its audience of primarily young adults includes controversial material, portrayal of criminal behaviour, gory scenes and graphical violence. COD franchise is one which has revenue in the hundred millions with its newest release BlackOps produced and distributed at “£130million” and receiving gross revenue of “£360million” in the first 24hours of release, suggesting its increasing success from its previous game Modern Warefare2 with “£310million” , £20million less than BlackOps.

The game focuses around different protagonists or ‘hero’ in the game, who attempt to rise through the ranks of the criminal underworld. The antagonists or ‘villain’ are commonly a character that has betrayed the protagonist or their organization. The impacts caused by video games are far worse than movies because the audience are intimate and interactive with violence, they mentally carry out effects of violence. This suggests that the addition of video games and portrayal of war genre violence links to aggression becomes clearer. “Video games have also been studied for links to addiction and aggression.” By exploring a number of studies such as, G.Burtons 'More Than Meets The Eye' and James Newman’s ‘Playing with videogame’s’ its suggested that video games doesn’t necessarily contribute to these problems or furthermore several groups have argued that there are few scientifically proven studies to back up these claims, and that the video game industry has become a target for the media to blame for modern day problems.

However the media isn’t always responsible for the portrayal of narrative roles throughout gaming as it had become a factor that encourages young adults to strengthen this violent behaviour. “Those people who need that trigger, that little push” . Therefore is already involved in antisocial behaviour, the media will reinforce your violent behaviour and encourage you to commit crimes. Depending on individuals social and even possibly their economic background and whether they’ve come from a stable background. Therefore would 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.

Narrative stereotypes also have representation of “human behaviour in a new urban environment” Initially narrative roles in the COD franchise are stereotyped as a physically powerful British/American stereotypical 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 events the character has no knowledge of. ”The born criminal made existing ethnic and racial categories.” Suggesting narrative roles in war genre games are noticed to have become the ethnic other becoming violent and irrational.
A highly respected theorist, Vladimir Propp also had his theory of narrative roles and said that ‘characters and actors have the narrative functions of villains hero donor father and false hero.‘ Meaning 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 realises the need for the challenge and may view it as an irritation that’s 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.

Video games such as Call of Duty have used males throughout its series of games. Which appeal to males as the character becomes aggressive, this is through the biological mindset of males in general, whereas women tend to be the passive audience, not being violent, more calm and rational. A first person shooting gaming institution like COD allows the player to roam around as the character then kill who and what they want allowing them to “Interact with the virtual environments in a more personal way” . This means that they’re “players with 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 violent 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”

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’s 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’s been argued that the aggressive content in video games could allow players to release their stress and aggression in a non destructive way, and would have the effect of relaxing them" . Some theorists such as James Newman and Cynthia Carter believe that ware genre video games like Call of Duty can cause high levels of addiction and aggression challenges this theory and allow audiences to pull away from reality to relieve stress and tension.

Theorist Stuart Hall said, 'Hollywood consistent use of cultural norms as narrative devices' suggesting 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 impact on the way in which audiences portray war genre games and can be the institutions way of portraying their games. ’Some Individuals/institutions always have greater power to portray how to react on situation’ Suggesting that issues and debates such as 'moral panics' will continue to shape the way audience portray power. Also how some institutions will act on moral panics and use scares such as 9/11 as a selling point, causing audiences to feed off the way heroes and villains are seen in reality rather than just in games.

Some theorists believe that the audience are passive and will immediately blame the media as a consequence, being responsible for all anti social behaviour and harden the youth to attend tasks of murder by simulating the killing of hundreds of opponents in a single game. Some theorists such as James Newman in their book ‘playing with video games’ 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 it is ok to portray the ‘hero’ as a relentless killer, taking down anyone or anything that gets in their way, however the villain or typically social and ethnic ‘other’ are seen as less violent but somehow portrayed as the bad guy in war genre games.

Fazan Mohammed argues a historical and moral opinion: "A lot of people make the excuse that this is just entertainment”, However Nicky Campbell states “there’s been more murder, mayhem, controversy and war caused by people reading the Holy Scriptures than watching/ playing this video game“ . Blaming 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, therefore ‘ 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. Therefore implying 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 giving the audience a Marxist view on the villain in war genre games.

Censorship is a factor in which media blames for the negative effects of the war genre games. The game industry is censored by the British Board of Film Classification, who is 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 ” meaning 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. Research showed that game players under the age of 18 reported that they get parents permissions 83% of the time before purchasing a game.

Most of the films we see at the cinema are narrative films, films that tell a story. Even films which are factual often apply 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 sequential 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.”

In relations 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 is 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.

However the hypodermic needle is only one of the theories in which can be suggested. The Cultivation theory is also a theory in which fits 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 institutions such as ‘Fox news’ and ‘CNN’ showing the American war heroes as saviors’ 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.

In conclusion the Call of Duty franchise does use the confrontational violence caused by the protagonist ‘hero’ in the narrative role as a unique selling point by acting on moral panics such as 9/11 bombings to suggest to the audiences that there is only one set narrative role that works in war genre games, allowing there to be a distinguished difference between the hero and villain in war genre games. Acting upon the ethnicity and storytelling of characters making war genre texts more complicated as they do not challenge the narrative character roles of the dominant white American male as the villain but always the hero, causing there to be one ethnic ‘other’ as the bad person.

Word count 2302


Bibliography:
Works Cited
Books
 Burton, G. (1990). More than meets the eye: an introduction to media studies. London: E. Arnold publications
 Torr, J. D. (2001). Violence in the media . San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press.
 Cohen, S. (2002). Folk devils and moral panics (3rd ed.). London: Routledge.
 Carey, J. W. (1988). Media, myths, and narratives: television and the press. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications.
 Sklar, R. (1993). Film: an international history of the medium. New York: H.N. Abrams. P
 Houston law review (Symposium 2003. ed.). (2003). Houston, Tex.: Houston Law Review.
 Newman, J. (2008). Playing with videogames. New York: Routledge.
 It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt, Houston Law Review, Patrick Byrd

Websites

 Gaming, Terrorism and the right to communicate. http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/gmj/fa08/gmj-fa08-kavoori.htm
 Gender portrayal in video games.
 http://www.geekink.co.uk/1/post/2010/09/gender-portrayals-in-video-games.html
 No Russian
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/English-Gentlemans-Quarterly/Oh-the-controversy-MW2-No-Russian-Fox-News-takes-a-stab
 Gender Portrayal and narrative in games
http://www.geekink.co.uk/1/post/2010/09/gender-portrayals-in-video-games.html
 Are games or films better at depicting war?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/sep/19/war-video-games-hennessey-sicart
 Hypodermic Needle http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/Hypodermic_Needle_Theory.doc/
 Propps Theories http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/propp.html

 Cultivation Theory
http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/Cultivation_Theory.doc/
 http://www.bbfc.co.uk/customer/cust_procDigi.php
 Social games for training analysis http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=4342804
 Nicky Campbell
www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_posts.php?thread_id=167165
 Serge Tisseron, Psychiatrist.
www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/violence_debates.cfm

Works consulted

• What’s wrong with games today http://muslimreverie.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/whats-wrong-with-this-picture/

• Video game violence
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/4054177/Video-Game-Violence

• Social games and training http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4342804

• Complex entertainment
http://faculty.fordham.edu/andersen/andersen_WarAndVideo.pdf

• Game narrative design http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~bogost/courses/spring07/lcc3710/readings/jenkins_game-design.pdf

• Has the violence in COD died down ? http://spawnkill.com/2010/10/25/call-of-duty-black-ops-violence-toned-down/


• Depicting war http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/sep/19/war-video-games-hennessey-sicart


• Not everyone is happy http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/nov/16/modern-warfare-2-record


• Demonizing Muslims in CODhttp://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/demonizing-muslims-on-screens-large-and-small/

• Antisocial networking http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9917199564