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E3 Day 4: No Blades, No Bows. Leave Your Weapons Here.

Posted by John Constantine

Much as I’d like to say things are winding down for E3, they’re really not. You have to wind up before you can wind down, after all. The announcements are over, the plans are in place, and 2008’s heavy hitters have finally been played. There isn’t too much more to say about E3 08’s broad implications for gaming as a medium and today didn’t yield any revelations that would necessitate any further waxing philosophical (though the Wii did finally surpass Xbox 360’s install base in North America. Surprise, surprise, surprise.) That said, while it’s still too early to call it a trend, two of E3’s more intriguing titles share a unique quirk: Ubisoft’s just announced I Am Alive, teased only with a CGI trailer, and EA’s freshly playable Mirror’s Edge are both blockbuster positioned games that de-emphasize violence.



As exciting as the gaming medium is today, full of fresh ideas and tempting technology, few games are total mold-breakers. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is truly novel. The vast majority of videogames find their most basic play in violence, whether it be shooting, cutting, or simply jumping on turtles. Violence is immediate, a readily accessible and exciting hook to elicit an emotional and visceral response from a player. It’s not that game designers and gamers are bloodthirsty so much as it’s a base fundamental of all forms of play, digital and non. Just look at the world’s most popular sports, soccer, football, tennis, baseball, etc. Athletic, competitive sport is, in large part, based around hitting, around impact. Hell, look at board games; chess is one of the world’s most respected intellectual pursuits and it is about slaughter and regicide. Mirror’s Edge is about avoiding confrontation, escaping from hostile forces through flight. When violence does rear its head in the game, it’s typically to disarm. Assaulting your aggressors with a weapon is penalized, hampering your greatest asset of free movement.



I Am Alive, unfortunately, is still an unknown quantity regarding actual rules-of-engagement. The trailer, depicting a young man pursued by urbanites in the aftermath of a city-leveling disaster, also implies a game about steering clear of conflict. The protagonist’s route to escape is not entirely free of bloodshed; he lures his pursuers onto a glass surface that cannot support their collective weight and they plummet to an aurally messy end. But the solution is still one free of outright brutality.

Perhaps, after thirty years, game makers are finding their way around the ever-roiling controversy that surrounds the medium by taking the weapons out of players’ hands. No harm, no foul, as they say. I like to think that, instead, artists are finding inspiration in alternative modes of stimulation. No blades, no bows. Leave your weapons in the past.

Related links:


E3 Day 3: No Alarms and No Surprises
E3 Day 1: Microsoft, Sony, Final Fantasy, and For Whom the Bell Tolls
E3 Day 2: Spin, Malaise, Sony's New Clothes, and Nintendo's True Disruption


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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia's prized possession is a certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

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