For quite a while now, something has been bothering me and I haven't been able to quite pin it down. The incidence of this vague dissatisfaction always seemed to border on petty, but I could sense a depth there, eluding me, mocking my attempts to fathom it. I've probably failed again, before I've even begun, but... perhaps aggregating things here will help. But be warned--I am going to talk about media depictions of "unsavory" things, which ironically some will find in itself unsavory.

Chapter One: Fallout

In 1998, the now defunct Black Isle Studios, kings of the computer role-playing game, published Fallout 2, one of the finest stories ever to grace the medium. It was remarkable in many ways, but the one I'd like to talk about today is unsavory depictions.

What inspires this discussion, appropriately enough, is Fallout 2's worthy successor, Fallout 3--and Mike Krahulik's insightful but unexplored commentary on the differences between these games.

The original Fallout games can't really be teased apart from the environment that created them. It's strange, but you almost have to consider them in terms of terroir. . . . You'd never get away with some of the [stuff] they pulled then, content-wise, back when Mom and Dad weren't looking. A unique conflux allowed for the creation of truly singular experiences.

As a result, I never expected Fallout 3 to manifest those earlier games. I wanted respect for the franchise, and systemic references, but I felt sure they were going to make a game that people would buy and play--which means erring on the side of amusement over simulation. There are people who get left out of that equation.

What you need to know about Fallout is that the games take place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland--the United States after global thermonuclear Armageddon. The object of each game differs, but in every iteration there are multiple endings, depending on the choices you made as you played the game, as well as many choices that do not influence the ending but do influence the gameplay--a true Choose Your Own Adventure in digital format. Fallout 2, the most robustly "free" of any of these games, offers all sorts of remarkable possibilities for your character:

• Teach subsistence farmers about irrigation, saving their town from starvation
  
• Use, abuse, and perhaps get addicted to various drugs
  
• Eradicate drug cartels, "cleaning up the streets" of various settlements
  
• Prevent or incite full-scale war through diplomatic mediation
  
• Get married (with a same-sex marriage option for female characters)
  
• Emancipate slaves
  
• Sell your loyal companions into slavery
  
• Kill men, women, and children alike--or don't
  
• Solicit prostitutes
  
• Commit (or prevent) the genocide of a race of super-intelligent monsters
  
• Liberate the test subjects of cruel human experimentation
  
• Become the star of an adult movie franchise
  
• Make charitable contributions to the destitute

Importantly, none of these actions are required to play or, for that matter, complete the game. It's not like, say, Grand Theft Auto, where the "free-roaming" environment is necessarily constrained by a decidedly antisocial (if completely freaking awesome) storyline. In Fallout 2, you can be good, you can be evil; you can be a pickpocket or a mechanic or a demagogue or a gunslinger, but you can't choose your consequences.

Fallout 3 is a really fun game, but ten years later, with improved technology making expanded decision-trees possible, there are actually fewer choices. Krahulik's observation is spot-on; too many people are too concerned about what goes into video games nowadays. Killing children is not an option; the sexual references are heavily muted; there's a lot of freedom and a lot of "grit" but if you've played the original games, you'll notice the constraint about as often as the freedom.

While Bethesda, the makers of Fallout 3, were able to improve the series technologically (ten years of progress makes for a much prettier game!), they actually had to water down the franchise's choice simulation content in order to avoid negative press--the kind of negative press that never happened for Fallout 2. Which is not to suggest that you can't be a shockingly evil character in Fallout 3. Just... not quite as evil as maybe you'd think.

Chapter Two: Just a Game... or Just Obscene?

When I initially wrote the above chapter, several weeks ago, I had some inkling of talking about virtue in games, and how it is much more convincing when accompanied by the potential for vice. More recently, the gaming media has been focusing on torture quests in World of Warcraft (quest detailed here). Jokes about torturous MMORPG grinding aside, this is a very interesting issue to me. Richard Bartle, the blogger who first made an issue of the torture quest, responded to gamers (most of whom didn't have a problem with the quest). One of his more shrill responses to internet criticism was nonetheless timely:

Strangely, I had noticed WoW was "just a game". For the many players who seem to think that this means anything goes, I guess you're really hoping Blizzard will be putting in some child sex quests in the next expansion. After all, no [real] children are being hurt, it's just pixels on a screen, and if you get [experience points] then why not?

I say "timely" because a couple of non-video-game stories about pornography, and more particularly, child pornography hit the web this past week:

In the first, internet service providers in the United Kingdom started censoring Wikipedia and eventually changed their collective minds. The image that started the censorship is a decades-old Scorpions album cover depicting a naked child. Chelsea Schilling followed up on WorldNetDaily with a list of all the unsavory things she could find on Wikipedia.

In the second, an Australian judge determined that pornographic Simpsons parodies were child pornography. In the United States, these parodies are protected expression, and Congressional attempts to criminalize such depictions have been shut down repeatedly by the Supreme Court; basically, this is considered dangerously close to recognizing Thoughtcrime. But perhaps not in Australia, doubtless pending some appeal.

After seeing all these stories in such rapid succession, I realized that, while some kinds of media are more closely (and, I would argue, unfairly) scrutinized than others, I was being a bit myopic in my evaluation of Fallout 3's "watering down" of the franchise. Because video games are my biggest hobby, seeing Fallout bow to the whims of the world was personally disappointing to me. But unsavory depictions are all around us; some in art, some in entertainment, some in reference materials... some of it gets challenged, as the above examples illustrate. Some of it doesn't.

Chapter Three: Definitions

But of course we skipped the most important part of the discussion. Just what constitutes "unsavory?" I was raised in a very conservative household; the barest (heh) hint of nudity was enough for my mother to push the "stop" button on the VCR. Americans in general are more sensitive to nudity than Europeans; the reverse is generally true of violence. Is on-screen torture "unsavory?" How about a textual description of such acts? I use the word "unsavory" because I wanted to encompass content beyond the merely incendiary, explicit, pornographic, or disgusting. I want this discussion to be about the ways in which media makes us uncomfortable, ways in which we attempt to discuss and come to grips with very challenging, often deeply unsettling events in the realm of human experience.

I imagine a spectrum of sorts is in play, one we might call the simulation spectrum... maybe. On one end we have textual depictions, oral retellings, basically descriptive mediums of communicating an unpleasant idea or event. Approaching the middle we might have visual depictions, then motion pictures. Past there we'd probably get into "simulation" territory--video games, mostly--and then perhaps "live demonstrations" followed by participatory events. By way of example, writing or saying "she hit the child with a frying pan" is unsavory, but pales by comparison with a visual depiction or firsthand witnessing of such an action.

How far one goes along the spectrum seems to amplify the unsavory nature of a given depiction. Talking about torture is a good deal easier than watching it happen, though simulating the act may be more or less difficult depending on how convincing the simulation is. I think it says a lot about World of Warcraft that so many players just don't think twice about what they're doing (some of them are pretending to pursue genocidal ends, from what I recall of Azeroth)--they're just farming experience! So the more like an act its depiction, the less savory it becomes.

There seems to be another spectrum in play as well--perhaps we can call this the judgment spectrum. At one end, we have anything that indulges unsavory depiction for the sole purpose of criticism--to condemn it, to paint unsavory behavior as antisocial. Toward the middle we might have analysis (like the one in which we are engaged) and past the middle, simple neutrality--unsavory depictions as elements of an amoral story, perhaps. Finally, we have the revolutionaries who portray the unsavory in an attempt to normalize it.

Religious texts, for example, are often chock-a-block full of sex and violence, but usually with criticism in mind. And the censored reference image (of a real naked girl) on Wikipedia generated community controversy, but the pornographic Simpsons image (of naked cartoon characters) generated criminal sanctions. So the purpose of a depiction seems to mute or amplify its unsavory nature as well.

Chapter Four: Reflection

So what have we learned? Frankly I haven't a clue. d^_^b

Honestly, the whole reason I undertook this inquiry in the first place was to decide why certain Fallout 3 design decisions bothered me so much. But determining what makes something more or less unsavory as a matter of normative inquiry doesn't seem to have answered my question. Hopefully it will be useful in further inquiry.

There is a meme, common among those who share my religious affiliation, that unsavory depictions in media are akin to putting "just a little bit" of poison into some foodstuff. I have heard the metaphor as animal feces in brownies, sewage in water, poison in pies... but I wonder about the validity of this poison metaphor. Is it okay to read a book about a girl who's stepfather got her pregnant? Definitely some unsavory depictions, but also an important (if heartbreaking) social message to confront. What about those banned Judy Blume books that have helped any number of girls through the challenges of early adolescence? Some substances are poisonous at certain concentrations, but beneficial at others--is that a valid extension of the metaphor?

Perhaps worse, the poison metaphor is often accompanied by a suggestion that there is enough good in the world to fill one's every hour with it, or in the alternative that there is enough evil in the world that we need not seek any out. Indeed, it is common among those who share my religious affiliation to eschew conversations that are the least bit depressing, the least bit challenging, the least bit thought-provoking.

These people are shallow twits. d^_^b There's really no kind way to put it; if you cannot bear to discuss the tragedy of losing a baby or a child or a spouse (unsavory topics of the most heartbreaking kind), what good are you to those who mourn? If you cannot withstand a frank word about female sexuality (perhaps another word for unsavory is "taboo"), what use can you possibly be to a timid bride? I recently heard of a bridal shower where the bride's mother would not permit certain gifts to be displayed by the bride, for fear of exposing some of the more sensitive guests to something unsavory. I'm not really a swearing man, but I could find it in myself to swear at a woman like that. Let the bride be excited about her pending nuptials, for heaven's sake. Celebrate with her; don't make her ashamed of what's shortly to be.

These examples rank quite low on the judgment and simulation spectrums, of course; context is a huge factor in the depiction of the unsavory. But does that mean we should limit "unsavory depictions" to oral tradition? Non-fiction books? Printed material generally? Must our entertainment be categorically, to employ the LDS jargon, "uplifting?" Is the problem more a matter of availability--in other words, are we more upset about the naughty album cover, or the fact that it's widely available on the Internet? Do we really want to "stamp out" unsavory depictions, or limit them to morality plays, or keep them around but feign ignorance in a vain attempt to exaggerate our own personal purity?

In the context of video games, I feel like there is tremendous potential to convey powerful messages through the occasional unsavory depiction. It is an immature medium, but video games can communicate virtue in a way movies cannot--by placing certain choices in the hands of the audience. One of the most powerful literary moments I have ever experienced came in the simple placement of an unarmed scientist at the heart of an enemy base in Fallout 3. (**Spoiler Alert**) You encounter her toward the end of the game, and she has just betrayed the cause your character's father died to protect. Whether you kill her or not has no larger consequences in the game. It's entirely your call.

I stood in front of that woman--a fictional character--for almost ten real minutes. My weapon was drawn. I pointed it at her head, turned away, turned back. She was defenseless. She was remorseless. She was spitting on everything my fictional character stood for, but one of the things he stood for was valuing life in the wastelands. I only killed in self-defense. But if anyone deserved a bullet to the back of her brain, surely it was this cold, traitorous scientist.

Did I shoot her? The answer is buried in the rubble of that enemy base, which exploded when I activated the self-destruct sequence on the primary control computer. I didn't activate the destruct sequence deliberately, but I didn't feel nearly as torn up about the situation. I had the usual excuses that games provide in these situations (interesting conversation about technological warfare there, I suspect). Not so when I was face-to-face with that scientist. It was as unsavory a depiction of bloody vengeance versus reluctant absolution as you could ask for--and rest assured that Fallout 3 earns its M rating in terms of gore.

That level of immersion is hard to achieve, but it leads to self-reflection of the most important kind--and it would be impossible without the possibility, the choice, to engage in a simulation-level unsavory depiction. So while unsavory depictions do not always have a "higher" purpose, are in fact often flatly gratuitous, I wonder if perhaps they have a purpose more often than we fragile humans want to admit. It seems to me that many, perhaps most, people are incapable of drawing a rational line between those unsavory depictions with value, and those without. And that makes me wonder further whether our squeamishness is just part of the process, something else we must learn to overcome before we can reap the full benefits of our capacity for critical reflection... or if it all really is just poison in the glass.