Walt Williams, the man behind the story of Spec Ops: The Line — the military shooter which permanently raised the bar for military shooters — has used a talk at this year’s GDC to claim that violent games are “creatively too easy” and the industry needs to try harder.

“We’re in an industry full of very intelligent, knowledgeable, and progressive people. It’s getting harder and harder for us to play these games and to look at them critically and say, ‘This is OK, this makes sense,’ especially as we get older,” he said.

“I would like to see less violent games out there. Not because they’re bad or wrong, but because I think creatively they’re too easy.”

Williams added that he was surprised by the positive reception of the first game, saying “Honestly, the game was very much an experiment. One that, to this point, I’m kind of really surprised that it ever made it to the shelves.”

Source: Gamespot

You know what I love? Unreliable narrators. I love stories where I can’t trust the storyteller. I love how such stories draw attention to the way they are presenting me information, the way they insist that I be critical and suspicious, and the way they show me that every story is presented from a particular point of view. In videogames in particular, I love how this unreliability of the narrator (usually the playable character) feeds into everything I experience in that world.

I love being forced to wonder if I am seeing this world as it really ‘is’ — or just how my character wants me to see it.

You know what I love? Violent videogames about videogame violence. I love the trend over the past few years (and the last year especially) to examine the various ways that violence functions in videogames. I love the way that these games aren’t so much trying to claim that videogame violence is simply ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but the way they simply want to understand it better, the way they simply want to respect its power more.

Of course, I am talking about games like Bioshock, Spec Ops: The Line, Far Cry 2 and, more recently, Dishonored, Mark of the Ninja, Hotline Miami and the still upcoming Far Cry 3. All of these games, in their own way, ask questions about the ways violence is both depicted and deployed in videogames — the way violence is used against the player, and the way the player uses violence. They want to help us as players have richer and more nuanced understandings of just what violence is doing in these games.

Can getting too excited about an upcoming game end up ruining the experience for you? David Rayfield explains how excessive hype has ruined his enjoyment of several games.

Many people including us here at games.on.net have praised Spec Ops: The Line for a gripping, morally grey single-player campaign, but the game’s lead designer has come out swinging against publisher 2K for what he calls a “relentless” approach in forcing them to have “tacked-on multiplayer” that was “basically a low-quality Call of Duty clone in third-person”.

“There’s no doubt that it’s an overall failure,” said lead designer Cory Davis. “It sheds a negative light on all of the meaningful things we did in the single-player experience. I don’t even feel like it’s part of the overall package – it’s another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating.”

“It was literally a check box that the financial predictions said we needed, and 2K was relentless in making sure that it happened – even at the detriment of the overall project and the perception of the game”, he said. The multiplayer side of the game was developer externally by Darkside Studios for inclusion into the title, not by Yager themselves. Still, Davis praised 2K for taking a gamble on their game: “They took a hell of a lot of risk with the project that other publishers would not have had the balls to take,” Davis concluded.

Source: Polygon

It’s always great when developers just randomly decide to hand out free new stuff, and Spec Ops: The Line is the latest to receive this treatment. 2K have just announced a series of four new two-player co-op missions available to all owners of the game on all platforms.

“The two players must work together to fight through waves of enemies and blinding sandstorms to complete their objectives,” writes the press release, “emphasizing teamwork and utilizing a variety of weapons and explosives”. That sounds about the size of it.

For more on Spec Ops and why so many are captivated by its gritty, morally grey storyline, why not read this excellent piece?

Source: Press Release

All this talk about Spec Ops: The Line has our resident gun-nut wondering exactly where that line is. How many virtual people have we really killed? And why has it taken so long for games to actually start talking about this in the first place?

If you’ve played Spec Ops: The Line, you’ll know that it’s a game with a dark, morally ambiguous narrative, that really makes you feel like you’re making tough decisions and having to live with the consequences. Patrick Stafford argues that, although it’s not perfect, Spec Ops has raised the bar for shooters everywhere, and we as players have an obligation to raise our standards as well.

Daniel Wilks heads into the post-apocalyptic ruins of Dubai to see if a gripping, morally ambiguous narrative about the true horrors of war can save this cover shooter.

Spec Ops: The Line might seem like a generic brown cover shooter – but as Toby McCasker discovers, some sharp writing and innovative environmental mechanics push it over the edge.