The Narrative of Violence

When looking through the GDC vault for 2013 I came across an interesting talk by Walt Williams the lead writer and narrative designer of Spec Ops: The Line at 2K. The talk was called "We are not heroes: contextualizing violence through narrative" in it he spoke about how they tried to write the narrative of Spec Ops: The Line with thoughtful violence. He discusses how in real life killing is an impactable action and you are likely to remember every time you kill but games can make it feel 'mundane' and 'filler'.  For Spec Ops they tried to make the violence meaningful, they did this by creating an illusion of causality. Williams describes the four steps they took to create this illusion and uses examples of how they did this in game. 

The first step is to embrace ludo-narrative dissonance, in particular the fact that characters can be hypocrites. Williams speaks about the action of killing and how it should not be justified because of the situation but by the character, this allows them to have more dimensions and be flawed. If the character is flawed they are more real and any hypocrisy that appears makes the character more relate able.
These flaws also lead on to the next point Williams makes about the character should always be evolving with the narrative. In Spec Ops they used generic evolution were in they wrote a set of generic lines for the character and all NPCs that matched certain tones and were triggered at certain narrative points. They gave the example of the main character Walker, at the beginning he is professional and doesn't really want to kill but sees that he might have to in order to do the job, he also is leading his men not ordering them. The second set of generic lines shows that he has become distant and he's finding it easier to order his men about, the third set shows how far he has come as a character as he has become unhinged. At this point he is seeing his wounded squad mates as inconveniences and all he wants is vengeance. The enemies are also given evolving lines were they begin confident that Walker and his team won't succeed to them being terrified, the writers wanted to show the enemies as victims as they would be if the game was from their viewpoint and to remind the player that while you are killing them they are human. 
The third step is that the choices of the player should reflect gameplay, with Spec Ops they tried to make the player really think about using guns and killing. An example of which is when the player is shown two men that have committed crimes, one of stealing water the other killing a family and you are told whether you want to kill one of them or neither of them. This choice gives the player a deeper understanding of the enemies they are facing and is meant to question whether it has been and would be wrong to kill them. The choice is morally grey and Williams states that they should be as the creators of the game should not be the ones to judge. 
Letting the players judge themselves ties in all the other steps of the illusion it doesn't force the idea of what should be right down the players throat but instead makes them think. In Spec Ops they do this with two types of judgement, silent and direct. Silent judgement has to be optional with no repercussions it makes the player feel guilty with no resolution. Direct judgement asks the player to make a conscience decision and makes the player judge themselves. This kind of judgement is best for the end of the game as they can look back on all they've done and gives them closure. 

Williams finishes on the thought that creating violent games are too easy and wonders about trying harder to create less bloodthirsty characters. In a Edge magazine feature that discussed why we use violence in games so much, they showed that programming death is much easier than life and the idea that killing is a part of video games. It also discusses as Williams did the idea that killing is an easy way to create drama and doesn't not require a lot of work on the narrative. 

However there are games that strive against that such as Spec Ops and Dishonored. The developers of Dishonored tried to create the idea that while you can kill people to achieve your goal there are other ways. They do this by pointing out that killing without thought is something the enemy would do and you are meant to have honour, and through the chaos meter. The chaos meter tracks the amount of kills the player has made and changes the environment according to this. In a sense they use it to judge the player, were they are saying to the player "Be good and don't kill otherwise the whole city suffers".

Violence in video games has been around since the beginning and as such I feel it shouldn't be abandoned fully. The type of games that have been created that show meaningful violence, such as the two discussed briefly, are definitely a step towards creating a better narrative with the violence giving players a choice to ignore the violence or pay attention and maybe even learn something about yourself. 

Bibliography 

"We are not heroes: contextualizing violence through narrative", Walt Williams 2K,
GDC 2013 Talk

"Why we Kill: what is it that makes us find videogame violence so entertaining?", 18/12/12,

http://www.edge-online.com/features/why-we-kill/ , retrieved 06/05/13

"To kill or not to kill? dishonored's makers on the morality behind murder", Keith Stuart, 16/10/12
http://www.edge-online.com/news/dishonored-to-kill-or-not-to-kill-that-is-the-question-and-there-may-be-no-answer/ , retrieved 06/05/13