IFS: Reading, Writing, and Speaking in the Digital Age

Even the most avid defenders of games as art can agree that a few bad apples spoil the entire industry.  In many ways, the following examples have earned the criticism they receive and paint the video game as an essay in a negative light.  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 tasks the player with a dastardly task in its otherwise superb story mode.  Sending a player into a Russian airport with nothing but a light-machine gun, the game's objective for this level consists of nothing but mowing down innocent waves of people.  Though this event served as a major plot device of the game, its climax was ultimately unsatisfying and poorly developed.  Though violence can be an excellent way to convey emotion (when done correctly as in Spec Ops), it existed here more for the shock value than anything else.  On the topic of shock value is a game that has used it as the sole marketing ploy: Hatred.  Recently unveiled through a trailer and not even released yet, Hatred literally tasks the player with completing a "genocidal" rampage in the streets of New York.  The game is absolutely tasteless, and gives no purpose for the senseless and shameless depravity other than that the player, as a protagonist, hates the world.  These rare instances provide the media as well as non-gamers with a reason to loathe our beloved industry.