In a surprising twist, a writer on the Gears of War series has commented that he thinks games are way too violent.
Tom Bissell, who recently co-wrote Gears of War: Judgment, spoke to The New Yorker this week, saying that games should not be left out of the debate on violence:
"I've been asked a few times to weigh in on the 'violent video games' debate, but I hesitate to because I feel like the N.R.A. set a trap by shining a spotlight on video games," Bissell stated. "Which isn't to say that I think that games are entirely blameless. Games, generally speaking, are probably way too violent."
Bissell also had a chance to speak with The New York Times, where he described some of the difficulties of writing a Gears of War game. "We realized pretty astonishingly quickly that the more writerly it got, the more it stopped feeling like a Gears game," he stated, adding that he was a bit frustrated with storytelling in shooter games in general.
"The storytelling possibilities of the shooter are fascinating but they're also very, very constraining," Bissell believes. "A shooter story, just by virtue of the fact that you the character, you the player, spend 99 percent of the game looking down the barrel of a gun, there's really only so much stuff you can do."
He also proposed that perhaps game writers are underestimating their audience.
"Being completely mindful that there's this mysterious person called the player sitting out there, who you're trying to give context to, is the really addictively fun part," Bissell said. "But it's also the really, really challenging part. I think game developers right now consistently underestimate the intelligence of their audience."
Despite the strange disconnect between Bissel's views on violent video games and his work on Gears of War, he brings up some good points. Perhaps as video game writing continues to mature and evolve, we might start to see more nuanced and interesting shooter games, and just game stories in general, in the future.