Occasionally I joke that each morning I read the right-wing broadsheet The Telegraph and left-leaning The Guardian, then assume the truth is somewhere in the middle. Chuckle chuckle, ho ho. There is usually some kernel of truth in jokes, which is why they resonate, but my humorous description perhaps makes my reaching of my own conclusions sound easier than it is.
Frankly, it can be a rollercoaster reading news media these days. I was generally encouraged by Simon Parkin’s article in the Guardian on April 20th on story-telling in videogames. This was a national newspaper piece on a broad topic which gets regular discussion in the videogames press: are videogames visual art, literature, or a mixture of both? The article references recent hits like Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, indie hit Gone Home and even ageing and frequently re-made classic The Secret of Monkey Island. Parkin’s article is titled Beyond the Shoot-em-up but frankly even the FPS genre has had attempts at serious story-telling, such as the much noted moral ambiguity of Spec Ops: The Line. Sure, there’s the big studio bluster of the Call of Duty series, but then again in other media – novels, TV shows, cinema – there’s populist pap, provocative high-art, and occasionally, inspired and intelligent drama. The videogame as a medium is no different; for every Spec Ops: The Line there are ten Call of Duty clones.
Parkin’s article also references Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, which rightly gets honourable mention for its approach to story-telling, which is discovered and observed, rather than narrated and dictated. I like the Dark Souls games because they obviously buck a particular narrative in Western gaming media these last few years, which seems determined to talk the Japanese games industry to death despite the obvious dearth of creativity from the major US studios.
I was appalled, then, to see that in the wake of a horrific murder in the UK, both the Telegraph and The Daily Mail prominently mention that the perpetrator played Dark Souls. The Telegraph article reports that Dark Souls is “a violent video game marketed with the slogan ‘prepare to die’,” and that the game is “a 15-rated ‘death-laden’ fantasy game in which a cursed character uses medieval weapons to kill others.”
This is both disingenuous and ridiculous. The ‘prepare to die’ tagline is not projected outwards from the protagonist to other characters; it is not telling you, the player, to go kill. It is a reference to the series’ renowned difficulty – it is you the player who must prepare to die. I note also the journalist, Gordon Rayner, has put ‘death-laden’ in inverted commas, which is usually an indication of attribution, without any such attribution. That’s the disingenuous part. Unless the Telegraph has a solid readership of zombie parents, who are mortified to see this game encouraging violence against their moral and upstanding zombie offspring, or a similar broad base of dragons worried about their personal safety, describing Dark Souls as a violent game, in which the player uses medieval weapons to “kill others” is ridiculous and possibly dishonest, not least as the Telegraph is so editorially ecstatic about Game of Thrones, a violent TV show in which cursed characters use medieval weapons to kill others.
The Telegraph does have a follow-up blog by Tom Chivers which does at least mention that the link between violence and violent games is “highly disputed,” but even this blog is essentially weak. Chivers asserts that “It might be the case – we don’t know – that murderers as a group are more likely to play violent video games than the rest of the population. But even if that were the case, would it be surprising if violent fantasists are attracted to violent fantasies?” Also he quotes a study that shows there is a brief spike in aggression after playing violent games. What he fails to mention is that the same report noted there is a brief spike in aggression after watching TV news. Do we have headlines “Another murderer noted as regular watcher of CNN?” No. Would we see an opinion piece “it might be the case – we don’t know – that murderers as a group are more likely to read the Telegraph than the rest of the population. But even if that were the case, would it be a surprise if violent fantasists are attracted to newspapers which pander to their beliefs?”
Because that’s the big old elephant in the corner that Chivers doesn’t mention, and indeed cannot for obvious reasons, in noting that both the Telegraph and the Daily Mail reported that the suspect in this horrible crime played games: to do so supports the narrative that those newspapers wish to maintain. 24-hour cable news shows need to keep your attention. This led in the first instance to the sensationalisation of news, as well documented by Charlie Brooker in a number of his shows and written works. Fox News took this further by deciding to pursue a particular political bias. As print newspapers struggle in the internet age, they also are driven by purely commercial imperatives.
This is not to say that I think there should be a free-for-all in videogames, or indeed any other medium. I think that ratings systems are entirely appropriate, and should be better enforced. I think that a great deal of responsibility lies with parents, and balance in life is important. I think authors do have responsibility for what they create. And I do think that humans can become desensitised to violence, be it in games, TV shows or the news. However, that is not what is at issue here. What is at issue here is the perpetuation of a lazy journalistic shorthand.
I imagine the Telegraph likely suffers from the same problems as the Conservative Party which it supports; it is locked into a core set of political stances that appeal to a later middle-aged and increasingly white-haired section of the population. “Videogames are linked to violence” is an accepted creed, a short-hand for the worry about the decline of Western Civilisation that used to be fulfilled by the video nasty. This is not a readership that will be around forever and those customers must be replaced. The follow-up blog by Chivers is, in my view, part of the set of columnists the Telegraph maintains to try to appeal to younger readers. However, those are the same younger readers who will instantly recognise this type of reportage as absolute bullshit. Frankly, having actual headlines linking a real murder of a real person to topics, ideas, and products for which there is no credible reason to do so not only highlights the moral vacuum of an agenda-driven editorial stance, it is downright offensive.