Literature Review (1/2/2014)

* Today I decided to do some research for the 'Literature Review' which the lecturer wanted emailed before the next session. Therefore, I decided to do the following research (2 hours) before writing it...

First I read some video game related books so as to find tips on how developers make characters unique through the changing techniques from the past to the present. To do so I used two books I own, 'Gaming Writing Handbook' by Rafael Chandler (2007) and 'Level Up: The Guide To Great Video Game Design' by Scott Rogers (2010). Although both had great advice for writing characters and putting them into the game, neither of them unfortunately explained the process I needed.

With the books I hoped would help... well, not helping... I decided to try and find online articles relating to my concept.

Next I decided to look up the 'Why Mario is Mental' video I had thought of using as an example for when to talk about if the classic plumber was in fact the bad guy and not Bowser. However, I found the video to be more nit picky than anything and not relevant to my work as it was more a parody than anything. Therefore, I decided to leave it as a possibility.


Typing up 'morality in gaming' got me the same results as before of the choices of good and evil in gaming, but not the characters themselves.

I then tried to look up 'the development...', ' the growth...' or 'the process of good and evil characters in video games' ended up with me only finding links relating to the video game 'Beyond Good and Evil'. This was a pain as sites relating to this one game constantly popped up instead of the information I was looking for. Therefore, I wish I had thought of another way of describing my subject as it is constantly being confused with the existing game listed above.

When the above failed I decided to play with the synonyms of 'good and evil' changing them to 'heroes and villains and even 'goodies and baddies'. The first new search only gave me links to super hero MMO's and information on the spiritual successor to 'City of Heroes' named 'Heroes and Villains'.
The second one after sifting through some kid sites surprisingly led me to an article named '10 pathetic video game baddies you should feel bad for killing' by Simon Gallagher. The article itself wasn't really meant to be considered serious, however, I did find many of their examples to be compltetly wasted with the possibilties they could have written about.

Unlike the 'Why Mario is Mental' video being more comedic, this article and its example annoyed me purely because they had a great enemy type that you should feel for, and yet didn't give the best reasons why.
Therefore, I decided to use their example of the head crabs from 'Half Life 2' as seen below.

Literature Review:

10 Pathetic Video Game Baddies You Should Feel Bad For Killing
Read more at http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fatally-unimposing-video-game-baddies.php/3#aqrCCLLo9OwOkVg4.99

10 Pathetic Video Game Baddies You Should Feel Bad For Killing
Read more at http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fatally-unimposing-video-game-baddies.php/3#aqrCCLLo9OwOkVg4.99

10 Pathetic Video Game Baddies You Should Feel Bad For Killing
Read more at http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fatally-unimposing-video-game-baddies.php/3#aqrCCLLo9OwOkVg4.99

Finding the article '10 pathetic video game baddies you should feel bad for killing' (by Simon Gallagher), I found that I just had to write about it as for a subject, that should generally be interesting, it fell short. This is a shame as it brought up one example that I had never considered until now. Yet, when I thought about it I found myself astonished (almost angry) that he hadn’t gone into far greater detail. Therefore, I decided I would.

The article itself as the title suggests is a list of ‘pathetic video game baddies you should feel bad for killing' yet, although he includes genuine examples, I find calling the head crabs from 'Half Life 2' (fig 1) pathetic is just wrong. I know he means in terms of being able to beat them, but my focus is on the other term he used, ‘feel bad for killing’.

Fig 1:

Head crabs are named after the horrible creatures that attach themselves to the heads of humans, thus turning them into zombie like creatures. However, these are not your ‘run of the mill’ zombies, despite them being slightly faster than an average shuffler, these ‘baddies’ as the article suggests are nothing more but victims.

Why? Well, I had discovered a while back from ‘Did You Know Gaming?’ that the people being controlled by the head crabs were screaming in reverse “Help, god, help! Help me!” as seen below (fig 2). This is interesting as listening to them again I find myself able to hear them this time round.

Fig 2:

Continuing from the examples above I decided to link them with my subject of whether they are good or evil.

As mentioned before we know them to be victims, yet they can cause more harm than good in that state. Does that make them villains? Not really, they are just victims after all. Yet how about those that kill them? You have to ask yourself, is it moral to kill zombies? Are those that go around destroying them heroes for saving the day, or in fact monsters themselves for killing those in torment? Furthermore, when considering a regular zombie is it right to put down someone who has been infected, but hasn’t ‘turned’ yet? Thus stopping them becoming  “one of them”.

Personally I think it all depends on the circumstances. If they are rotten corpses with no means to be ‘cured’ then they should be put out of their misery, as is especially apparent with the head crabs so as to free them from their misery and stop them from hurting others. Yet if someone was just ‘infected’ by say a normal zombie and could be cured then I would say try and keep them alive for as long as possible. At the end of the day it really depends on the situation.  

I find the above things interesting to think about due to my love of the survival genre, therefore, it would be interesting to include the information found today perhaps within the context of my ‘Walking Dead’ example in my main project. 

Having written the above I realise that it doesn't quite fit the lecturer's brief of reviewing an article, nor does it quite cover my chosen topic as my literature review covers morals rather than the development of good and evil characters in video games. This is unfortunate as I need to find some articles which are both relevant and in depth rather than just web site opinions. Therefore, I will ask my lecturer the next time I see him if he can help me out, and if I should consider changing my subject despite not wanting to.

Harvard Referencing: ADD BOOKS!!!

• Fig1: Gallagher, S (2013) 10 pathetic video game baddies you should feel bad for killing [Online Image]. Available at: http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fatally-unimposing-video-game-baddies.php/4 (Accessed: 1/2/2014).
• Fig 2: Did You Know Gaming? (2012) Half Life 2 [Online Image]. Available at: http://didyouknowgaming.com/post/24272971121/half-life-2 (Accessed: 1/2/2014).
• Chandler, R (2007) Gaming Writing Handbook. United States of America: Charles River Media.
• Rogers, S (2010) Level Up: The Guide To Great Video Game Design. West Sussex. A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication. 
• YouTube (2013) Game Theory: Why Mario is Mental, Part 1. [Online Video]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WMSQNVhMqA (Accessed: 1/2/2014).