9-11 and Violence in Virtual New York City
OPINION
This is a very risky title to use for an opinion piece. Partially because 9/11 was, is and always will be a very controversial and sensitive topic in the American and global psyche, and partially because violence in video games has been under fire for years.
The games (cntd)
Crysis 2 was also set in New York City, with entire sections of the city destroyed during the initial stages of a devastating alien invasion of earth. While Prototype and GTA IV allows you to wreak havoc in New York City, Crysis 2 allows you to actually destroy parts of New York City. Skyscrapers collapse, roofs cave in, and even Central Park gets torn up into pieces.
Then there is Modern Warfare 3, which shows a smoldering New York City skyline courtesy of a full-scale Russian invasion. The amount of devastation New York City is subjected in the game stands heads and shoulders above the horror we have seen the city suffer through. From collapsing buildings to a besieged harbor, and from Russian navy ripping apart the coastline to jets slamming into skyscrapers, Modern Warfare gave us a glimpse into what war would be like if it came to some of the most urbanized, modern cities of the world.
The upcoming Rainbow Six: Patriots is also set in parts of New York, and if the first (non) gameplay trailer is to be believed, there will be many iconic locations rendered in frightening detail, under clear and present threat of a terrorist attack.
Related?
So the question remains: did 9/11 render gamers emphatically immune to seeing New York City in ruin? It certainly gave developers a new, favorite location to subject to the destruction inflicted by <insert disaster> because <insert vague tie-in with plot> and now <insert protagonist> (read: you) is tasked with dealing with it. One possible explanation that comes to my mind is the representation of New York in pop-culture and most of Hollywood as a symbol of the free world. The Statue of Liberty is widely recognized as the embodiment of this freedom, as exemplified by its use in the Planet of the Apes movies, where the Statue lies in ruins by a beach as all humans are enslaved by evolved primates, and the cult-classic Cloverfield, which decapitated the Statue in an iconic scene and flung it tumbling through the streets of Manhattan. Perhaps developers equate breaking the spirit of the symbol of the free world with breaking the spirit of the free world, and thus invoking an emotional response in the players.
Related or not, it would seem to me that the destruction of the Twin Towers has attracted an inordinate amount of attention to New York from video game developers. There also seems to be a trend towards making scenes set in the city ever more violent. The question is: where does it end? How much violence will suspended disbelief allow before we no longer take a game seriously? And when will we grow bored with New York as a setting for a game? Answering those questions would fill another article, but the fact that they can be asked at all means that developers would do well to find a fresher setting for future endeavors.