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Denver, 9:30 PM
Sun Nov 22
16 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/01/09
11/01/09
Therefore, the elderly male will be the "old guard" Obi-Wan Kenobi style man whose main role is to drop dead early on in the game and pass their "wisdom" on to you. The elderly woman will be the grandmother / caretaker who is there to nurture the hero when they are young and disappear once the hero reaches his/her "heroic" age.
Since a woman must, by law, look good in a bikini before taking a major role in a game, the older woman is relegated to the sidelines, emerging intermittently to provide exposition or beg for coins.
This is not only an issue in video/computer games. The three paragraphs above would just as easily describe Hollywood, television, comic books, etc. Unfortunately, changing this situation would require both developers and players to change their mindset.
At the moment, the only refuge from this plague of youth are games that allow you to change the appearance and back story of the character, like Dragon Age.
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I sure didn't feel sorry for his aging problems when I played the game, and I can't tell if Kojima is trying to be serious, or silly, with Snake's aging, because all I see is the silly, and its way too silly for silly's sake. #aging
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10/31/09
It simply reflects true human nature. It has been postulated that the average age of the people who built Stonehenge, for instance, was around 24-26.
Also, you're more likely to have your life-defining moments and challenges in early-mid adulthood. These "great adventures" are typically the ones that bear enough significance to provide purpose to a game. How common is it to begin your adventure in your late 60s, and just what kind of adventure could there even be?
As for old people as objects of desire, what about Kings and Queens? The amount of sacrifices made in the name of an old ruler may not be too popular in current games, but that is simply because of individualism and our culture's dismissal of monarchies, not or lack of reverence to the elderly.
Saving a young person will always inherently carry more weight than saving an older one, simply because you are "saving more potential life." Young people may also serve as more aesthetically pleasing "trophies," for obvious natural reasons.
Still, this is an interesting subject. And as the player base continues to age, I'm sure we'll see more prominent roles for the elderly. #aging
10/31/09
10/31/09
Now, don't get me wrong, but wasn't Kreia also a soulless sith, the ultimate dark manipulator? I guess we can have old people, as long as they're Satan? #aging
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If that particular comment has moved on to page 2, well that is broken too, so you won't be able to view it at all. #aging
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Anna: Nineties?
Sam: I was going to say "seventies". Could you please stop making me feel old?
Anna: I've got bad news for you, Sam, you are old.
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Many game types could certainly add an "aging" mechanic and even a way of avoiding it (that green elixir in Sims 2 that made your Sim not age). #aging
10/31/09
In this scene, Marcus Fenix is retired, back at his father's home, and Cole Train is trying to talk him back into one last mission...
Train walks up behind Marcus, while Marcus eats a bowl of oatmeal and fishes.
Glover: Yooooo! Fenix! Dawg! Caught anything at all in that sorry excuse for a Locust hole?
Brimely: Cole? What are you doing here? I can't believe you drug your post-concussion-syndromed buttocks all the way out here just to watch me fish.
Glover: We need you back, Marcus. There's another outbreak of Locust! You gotta get back on the Cole Train and chainsaw some hordes!
Brimely: We've single-handedly killed over 50 million Locust. We eradicated them in the third movie. We killed the queen that got launched into space in the 4th. We destroyed all of Earth along with Master Chief in the inevitible cross-overs in the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th. How could there possibly be any more left?
Glover: Time travel, Marcus. Bastards sent a colony and a tanker of Immulsion through a temporal wormhole that held them in time stasis for 20 years, and now they're about to emerge and destroy Vulcan.
Brimely: I...I don't know Cole. I'm not the same Marcus I used to be. I don't think I can kill another Locust. I've got kids. I'm a farmer now. I'm growing things Cole, not destroying them. Besides, look at the size of my legs and feet. The Diabeetus is taking hold of me.
Glover: Come on man! I can't do this alone! I"m getting too old for this shit! I need you to help me break Dom out of the nursing home. He can't sit in there making mashed potato statues of Maria forever!
Brimely catches a small pathetic fish that looks a lot like a locust and he throws it back into the pond in disgust: Fine. I'm in. Just don't tell my wife where we're going. Oh, and no more roadie running. My back doesn't bend like that anymore.
Glover: All right! Does a fist pump, but then pulls something and has to sit down. #aging
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Such games as Heavy Rain, for example, would enable a chance for a protagonist to endure the challenges of a game. Other games, like Left for Dead series are also equally perfect, since it's about survivors in a zombie FPS.
Games like Metal Gear Solid 4 are interesting, since it isn't often that we examine a rapidly aged protagonist fighting the affects of rapid aging, while also facing the experiences of various fatigue and trauma; also not commonly experienced in games.
The truth is that in order for games to push the envelope, there should be more explored to make it work. Now, that's not to say that we should be seeing "Sado-Masochist Protagonist Over 9000 Saves the day", or anything, but rather games that pretty much blow your mind, leaving you to say "huh, I never thought of it that way."
Aged characters are perfect for that. #aging
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Sure, when someone elderly who is integral to a plot meets their eventual demise it can have an upsetting effect on the player, case and point; Harold and Maud (a film directed by Hal Ashby).
Though if you have followed that character throughout their life then their eventual demise and every trial that precedes is can be truly heart wrenching, case and point Siddhartha (a book by Herman Hess), and to some extent, the trials of Snake in the Metal Gear series.
And I believe that such effects are good. If you can make the player feel anything, even typically negative things like sorrow, repulsion, fear or anger, then, assuming this was your intent, you have succeeded in your art form.
Personally, when a child, or even a relatively young adult dies in a game, I'm not so bothered. Yes it sets the more downbeat tone to the game, and can sometimes come across as disturbing, like in Max Payne, though when someone elderly dies I find myself more effected. The culmination of an entire life's back story reaching a grinding conclusion to something as awful as the slow rot of old age I find far more horrifying and emotionally devastating.
Perhaps it's my own inerrant fear of growing old, or perhaps a subconscious association with the death of my grandfather whilst I was still at a vulnerable and impressionable age, but for me, any game that can successfully put me into the mindset of a more experienced and wise, yet fundamentally mortal in every sense character, is a game I'm likely to not only enjoy, but treasure, gleaming a far more long lasting emotive impact.
And sorry for my ramble folks. #aging
10/31/09
So you're saying Snake dies? #aging
11/02/09
10/31/09
The limitations of being old are therefore fundamental to the idea of being aged in interactive media. Anything else is just fluff (that is, non-interactive elements in interactive media).
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"You call this a zombie attack?! This is nothing like the zombie invasion of '63!"
"...what?"
"What?"
"Aww, I'm just shittin' ya." #aging