I’ve Had Enough ‘Maturity’

By Mike Mason

I’ve Had Enough… is a fortnightly column by Cubed3’s Mike Mason, picking apart the problems of the games industry.  This time, he’s had enough so-called ‘maturity’ in videogames…

If gaming’s definition of maturity was applied to the entire planet, we’d be pretty screwed.

Forget reason or intelligence; guns, gore, sex and swears are the quadrants that make up the circle of mature content in the video game world.  If you were to count up the number of these instances on fingers, you’d probably have to go to a Take That concert to get hold of the amount of hands you’d need.  Used correctly, they’re fantastic – you only need to see House of the Dead: Overkill to realise that – but with the current generation in full fling it’s only too apparent how common these elements are.  And that’s fine – but I’ve had enough of the games using these elements in abundance being pegged as examples of ‘maturity’.

If you think about what the word ‘mature’ entails – that it’s something fully grown, adult – then yes, in terms of pure content games including substantial amounts of these things should be considered mature.  These are things that only those of appropriate age should be exposed to with frequency.  That’s from a content perspective, though.  My problem is that a lot of the games considered adult are only so on the surface.  If a game is supposed to be mature, should it not be reflected in a deeper manner in the content? In a truly adult game, it should be possible to exclude elements such as these and retain that grown-up feeling.

While it’s certainly not a game that could fit into my described ideal of maturity, Brütal Legend goes about things in an interesting way in allowing you to switch off gore and profanity without affecting the gameplay.  It’s a feature I’d like to see more of – not because I’m a prude or would even necessarily use the function all the time, but because it might force some developers to abandon these things as crutches of appeal for their games.  So often it’s obvious that blood is being tipped everywhere just for the sake of it. These are not aimed at adults; they’re collections of adult elements bundled together in ways that make teenagers feel older than they are.  That works, as sales figures prove, but somebody looking for a fulfilling, grown-up experience will have to search around that bit harder.

For me, it’s the games that are less explicit, the ones that don’t make it obvious whether they’re aiming for an older audience or not, that come across as those most deserving of the ‘mature’ banner.  Shadow of the Colossus is one of those games.  There is a level of violence, as you might expect from a title revolving around stabbing giant monsters to death, but it never feels like that’s the focus, thanks to the way you must think, study and discover the beasts’ Achilles heels before being able to assault them effectively.  It feels like a journey rather than a game about destroying enemies.  It evoked emotion in me like nothing I’ve played since; sadness when taking down a creature that was meandering about in its own life before it encountered me, anger at a particularly fierce beast and a mix of jubilation and bitterness after finally taking down what was ultimately a blameless obstacle in my path.  There are no words that explicitly tell you, but I couldn’t help but feel guilt at the scenario once I stopped to think about it – you’re destroying largely innocent beings selfishly, for nought but a single human life.  It’s by making you feel these things that Shadow of the Colossus is more worthy of maturity proclamations than the majority of 18-branded games.

It’s the lack of emotional connection that makes me look right through most ‘mature’ games. How many times have you felt genuinely affected by a game? Not many? Yet gaming appears to have all the elements it needs to get reaction at its fingertips; potentially all the benefits of books, films, music, plus interactivity.  I don’t mean people should be weeping into their control pads all the time – that’d probably lead to a lot of trouble given the fragility of systems nowadays – but why is it so rare that we might feel true discomfort, regret, disappointment in experiencing a game – and not because the game’s quality has fallen short, but because it’s what was intended?

There’s also a lack of consequence to so many titles.  You’re given a gun, a lead pipe, some gardening shears, whatever, and proceed to tear the crap out of hundreds of opponents for the entirety of the playthrough.  The worrying thing is that it’s completely unshocking and there are no comeuppances for it.  Would it not be refreshing to see more games that challenge you to dig deeper and work out alternatives to bloodshed, encourage players to make some responsible choices or, at the very least, show some kind of negative fall out for certain actions?

I’d love to see a mature game where, for the duration, you are given a gun with a single round of ammunition, say six bullets.  You can use them whenever you want, but it’s really in your best interests to consider carefully before doing so.  A game that instils a sense of morality into you, so that if you do take a life unworthy of retribution you would feel something and not just laugh it off.  The problem is in working out how this could be accomplished convincingly, which I suspect is a reason that nothing like this is out there.  That’s not mentioning budget restrictions – an idea like this would probably be from an independent developer, as it doesn’t exactly scream ‘mainstream success’ like the other gorefests on the market.

All this isn’t to suggest that there aren’t worthy examples of a more mature approach to games.  Quantic Dream look set to repeat the feat of Fahrenheit with their Playstation 3 exclusive Heavy Rain, with one critic claiming they felt discomfort while playing a scene in which one of the main characters is forced into a striptease.  Mass Effect deals with genocide, racism and political unrest in addition to gunplay and the infamous sex scenes.  But such examples are few and far between, and the excuse of gaming’s relative infancy is only becoming more strained by the day.  The games that promote themselves on the back of myriad guts, explosions and bare arse cheeks have their place in the industry, but it sure would be nice to see the idea of actual maturity spread to a few more developers.