Emerging Video Game Trends, Culture, and the End of the Hero

Since I've been on the topic of how society reacts to modernistic alienation, I came to think of some emerging trends in the medium of video games to be of interest to this discussion. An old model that has been used in video games for the past many years; likely since it became popular, has been to place an individual hero type against impossible odds. Most games, especially action games, tend to use this model where the power to save humanity is found in the one, singular hero.

With the coming rejection of modernity and its alienation therein, as well as with the events of 9/11 which arguably humbled the nation and changed its culture to seeing the real relevance of the dangers of a service-based economy that relied upon other cultures and nations, people have had to struggle with the structures that modernity has left. So, even though the postmodernists largely reject the previous culture for those reasons and the modernist choices that created the service economy, they still must confront the structures that have been left in their wake.

Confronting these alienating and proven dangerous structures (ala 9/11), video games merge into this with some of the emerging trends we're seeing now. As stated, the modernistic video game structure tended to focus on the power of the individual. A more postmodern view then tends to put more focus on the power of society, for the reasons just stated. An example of this is the game, Left 4 Dead. The game isn't quite the postmodern social game ideal in that it confronts these problems, but it is a step in the right direction. The game can be described as a zombie horror multi-player game. The relevance is that the symbols of human civilization; the unaffected humans themselves, are fighting a human, but unhuman force that is both confusing to understand and powerful. Both of these can be applied to having to confront a force that one is alienated towards because of a lack of understanding, and hence deals with the current cultural discussion.

Now, Left 4 Dead could be an important and used piece of media to discuss these cultural issues, and it may do it better than zombie multi-player attempts of the past. I'm not saying that past attempts were invalid, its just that Left 4 Dead may be getting significantly closer to the goal. The reason for this is that the opposing force, that which the players are alienated against, can be controlled not by humans, but by a computer. This is important because a computer can follow pre-described purposes and action relentlessly; just the way that these forces genuinely appear to do so in our current society. Human-based opposition is much less powerful because it can be seen that humans, even in the MMORPG world, have little sense of purpose and duty; they are listless and cannot focus strongly enough on much of anything enough to resemble something close to actual purposed pursuits.

And so, the emerging trend in the medium of interactive media (video games), seems to be that of putting together a group of players communally and pit them against a force that they are alienated against and that is relentless in its pursuit to destroy them. If you can't wait for Left 4 Dead, a game that may work similarly, is the Half-Life 2 mod, Synergy, where one can play as a team through the entire Half-Life 2 game, where of course, there is also a zombie-like force present; the Combine.