Thought/Process: Runaway Hit
Can an explosive topic in the real world serve as a catalyst for a compelling game?
9/24/2008 6:36 PM | 6 Comments | Page 1 of 4
Discussing or portraying race relations in the various media of popular culture tends to be an instantaneous way to spark controversy. Videogames are no different. Perhaps the hottest firestorm to date in the industry flared up when Newsweek's N'Gai Croal talked about his reactions to the
Resident Evil 5 trailer during an
interview that ran on the MTV Multiplayer blog. Responses, name-calling and outright invective blazed for days across videogame-related message boards and blogs all over the Web.
The radioactivity has cooled down a bit since then, but I think one of the reasons that the
RE5 controversy burned so bright and hot was the issue of representation. It's not a matter of percentage, as in X amount of black characters in all videogames equals an accurate portrait. Rather, it's the kinds of roles that black characters wind up in that often raise hackles. Much has made of the way that the rowdy, crude soldier Cole Train rubs up against negative black male stereotypes in the first
Gears of War game. Even Kudo Tsunoda, the project lead on
Gears of War 2, has
criticized the first game's approach. No matter whether or not you agree with Croal's initial reaction to the first
RE5 trailer and his comments about it, it's impossible to deny that they enabled some of the most revealing and frank commentary on race that the still-young medium of videogames has yet experienced.
Still, all that drama begs the question: Can you make a game that draws from the divisive, messy history of race relations in this country and still have it be a compelling experience? Barring
one other really good example that I know of, this question's not something that the swirl of debate surrounding
RE5 ever really touched on.
Well, gentle reader, I'm here to offer a humble proposition of a videogame that would do just that. Allow me to relay a conversation that happened two years ago:
The real-world roots of
Runaway.
"Dude, it's me. I got your IM earlier. What's up?"
"Yo, I got an idea for a game." This was my buddy Dave talking. We've known each other for over 15 years, and while he's not quite as nerdy as me, we pretty much dig the same stuff, and we've always enjoyed spit-balling ideas.
"It'll be a GTA-style game, open-world, free-roaming..." I groaned inwardly. While he isn't a games journalist like me, Dave surely knew that there's been a glut of sandbox-style imitators ever since
GTA 3's unprecedented success. So why go there?
"Uh-huh. And what else?" I asked.
"One word:
Runaway."
"Wow." Maybe it's that pseudo-telepathy that happens when you've been friends with someone for a long time, but I immediately got what Dave was pitching. As we talked, the high concept came into focus: You play as a slave escaping from a plantation in the United States during the 1800s. Our hero or heroine makes a fateful decision to flee from servitude in Virginia when he/she finds out his/her family is being sold to another slave owner. With that story springboard, let's assume the basic elements of a open-world title -- a mission-rich sandbox environment with multiple paths running through it -- is in place.
