I love Postal 2

Give Us More Intestines on the Sidewalk!

The same thing’s bound to happen with gaming. It’s probably already taking place, if you note how adult-oriented games have gotten more play with regular media outlets the past few years. The runaway popularity of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City got things rolling on that front, their monstrous sales numbers putting all games front and center whether the powers-that-be at Entertainment Weekly liked it or not. They couldn’t just ignore this stuff any longer. If not for Columbine and the cottage industry of halfwit psychoanalysts (what are goth kids really all about? does playing Quake train you to shoot a rifle? how much can I charge to present my thinly-researched suppositions to the Denver Rotary Club?) that it created, the level of acceptance would likely be even greater at this point. As it is, though, we’re doing pretty damn good when you consider that Vice City has sold around ten million copies in under a year, and that many of those copies have passed across the sales counters at Wal-Mart, once the self-assigned watchdog over naughty John Mellencamp album covers.

Still, we could be doing better. Which is why I love those nutbar news stories about EverQuest immolations and have a weak spot for the likes of Postal 2. Although I haven’t played the game yet, and in all honestly probably never will unless someone at Running With Scissors sees this column and sends me a freebie, I’m overjoyed that a developer is trying to hurry things along with a game so idiotic and offensive. The sooner we get through all of this garbage, get over the childish need to offend the masses, the sooner we get to the good stuff. When the masses are no longer viewed as the enemy by a sizable portion of the game development world, we’ll get games that are more mature, more adult. Gross-em-out shock-value stuff won’t completely vanish, but it will almost certainly become a less important and less visible part of the industry.

Bring it on!

So I say bring on all the bloody, racist, chauvinist, insensitive crap. Right now. I want to get to the good stuff before I’m too old to properly enjoy it, and time’s-a-wasting. Let’s get Postal 3 rushed into production, with more Apu-like stereotypes running convenience stores and dogs with AIDS. And add more Gary Coleman! All upcoming real-time strategy games should incorporate backhanded slaps at non-white races, similar to the way Command & Conquer: Generals gave a Middle Eastern terrorist group suicide bombers and Anthrax-tipped shells. Shooters must all be forced to use the GHOUL 2 rendering system from Solider of Fortune 2, so we can delight in exploding entrails. Screw that quaint old shower of blood and guts—give us more intestines on the sidewalk! And we need more sex in roleplaying games. Don’t just put the bimbos on the box covers, get hot naked chicks in the games and let us have sex with them in creative ways humiliating to women!

Okay, so I’m not serious here (though I did get sort of worked up on that last one). But I do think that this childish need to shock mommy and daddy is a real problem that’s holding back the games industry from wider acceptance and greater maturity in content. And that once we get to the point where we can no longer shock the old folks—can that point be very far away? we’ve already got Gary Coleman wielding an M-16 and a sociopath beheading rollerskaters with a sword in Vice City—games can finally grow up. Gaming can never really leave home, though it can develop into an older teenager who’s passed the sullen I-hate-you-mom stage and moved on to mature acting out like breaking curfew and smoking the odd doobie.