voidinteractive.net The spiritual successor to classic OG Rainbow Six and SWAT games, Ready or Not [RON] is now in early access on steam after a year or so in closed Alpha. About 70% of the game is still missing and been developed on, taking a look at some of the earlier trailers for this shows just how much is still to come and how bare bones the Steam early access is. That said the basics are nailed here in my opinion and i've been having a lot of fun with this playing with a team that all listen to each other. It's really fun to see just how fast things can go wrong and see how you all handle it. You may or may not of read recently that VOID interactive, the developers dropped there publisher, Team 17. This was because VOID did not want to compromise on the game they wanted to put out, including a upcoming level where you are tasked to put a stop to an active school shooter. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1144200/Ready_or_Not/ https://discord.gg/readyornot There is a supporters edition, which is very steep with only a few extra perks that aren't all implemented yet, but the option is there if you want to give the now fully independent devs some extra support.
I suppose the obvious question is: what are its unique selling points compared to the now-industry-dominating Rainbow Six Siege and its ilk?
It sounds like a spiritual successor ot SWAT 3 and 4 as opposed to Siege's more Counter Strike like take on things. At least I hope that's the case, I played SWAT 4 to death.
It's nothing like Siege. Would like comparing Squad to Battlefield 2042. When i said Rainbow, im talking about the very first Rainbow games that wasn't a gogo gadget cartoon hero shooter game. It's a realistic sim. I dont know of a notable SWAT / HRT sim since SWAT 4. there is zero hour but although that has wider content at the moment, its more basic in its scope due to not been able to do non lethal, and the gameplay trailers indicate the devs are aiming much higher for the full release product. Januraly update:
That's all fine. I just don't need a game (because a sim that you play for fun is still a game) where you deal with school shootings in my life. Especially one where the the dev's initial reaction to questioning it make it seem like they treat the controversy like it's some sort of badge of honour: https://web.archive.org/web/2021122...?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
A friend and I looked at this recently, because we like tactical shooters (That we are unbelievably shite at). It seemed interesting, buuut the developers seem a little gung-ho on the school shooting bit.. Prooobably going to give this one a swerve.
That's obvs fine, if it's a bit too raw or whatever then totes get that but this is far from the first game to have a "risky" level. No Russian comes to mind straight off. Also we all play games of killing people in lots of different ways, for me it been in a school doesn't make any difference to me vs a shopping centre or whatever For me, VOID holding fast on there vision of the game is a big plus for me. Too many games succumb to the demands of the shareholders and publishers that end up ruining the game that the devs wanted to put out.
To me it's a matter of decency and taste - even if Team 17 hadn't walked away it'd still be a rather.. unsavoury thing to put out there. Especially in the world where kids in many schools are being taught active shooter drills and there's a real risk of kids not coming home? Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of kids, but.. school shootings in media or gaming is just. Not on, IMO.
I would prefer they give it a go than not. It's already been done badly (Active Shooter) and gaming at large is so casually offensive anyway (see Call of Duty's 'shocking' moments they cram in every year) that the line got crossed decades ago, so why not? You never know, they might get it right, I'm not confident but it's possible. I doubt it will have an affect on America and it's people shooting each other problem.
Personally, I can't say that line of thought holds much water for me. It's akin to thinking, in my view, 'people used to **** in buckets and throw it out the window - It hasn't been in good taste ever, but maybe if we try a sparkly bucket it'll be better'. I'm not convinced 'because CoD did it' is a good reason to do.. Well, anything. Given their history of ditching dedicated servers, or hiring high profile rapists, or generally failing to innovate their way out of a wet paper bag, and so on and so on.
Idk guys, the problem is the school shootings, not the video game industry's decisions on whether or not to depict them. Is We Need To Talk About Kevin irresponsible for depicting a murderous teen, or responsible for pressing the issue into mainstream consciousness where it can be discussed, dissected and better understood? Either, who cares. It doesn't increase the odds of teen murder, it just reflects reality. Art always reflects reality. When I'm hung over, I don't get angry at my mirror for depicting a drug addict. I get angry at myself for relapsing. I'm very upset about the reality of school shootings but unless the game actually makes them more likely, I don't see why it matters (though electing not to engage with the content out of taste, as I did with GTA5's torture mission, is fine). (A good flipside example would be 13 Reasons Why, which was good TV but ethically repugnant in that it actually increased the odds of teen suicides happening by depicting it a certain way.)
For what it's worth, I didn't say cancel it. I said, to me, it's in exceptionally poor taste (To the point where I won't be - Especially the way the devs engaged over the inclusion - Playing it) (Edit, finished that thought..) What's more, they have two options with regards to that particular level - Full realism where you're actually able to shoot kids (Let's not pretend that if the mission ends because you shoot a kid there won't be a mod out there to change that within a week of release), or.. Empty school. Which is going against the concept of realism, no? Sure, it doesn't glorify the shooter - So far as we know - But given the cavalier attitude that's been displayed over such a sensitive topic, it doesn't fill me with confidence that there will be a suitable tone in the game. It does however, normalise something that should not be normal. Kids go to school to learn ****, not wonder whether they'll go home, to the hospital, or the morgue. Even normalising it a little bit is out of order, in my opinion, as America has already chosen guns over kids dozens of times a year - A cursory (lazy) google suggests there were 34 shootings in schools in 2021 compared to 8 in 2020. They're getting more common and nothing gets done because it's becoming the 'new normal' by the numbers. IMO, America doesn't need more exposure to extreme violence/guns at school.
Actually that's a good point. And taps into the issue of intended play. Simply putting kids and schools into a game with guns and tactical units invites the issue of players being able to shoot kids. Dan defines intended play as anything the game reacts to, positively or negatively, so the only way to delineate shooting the kids as not intended play would be to make them take no damage and show no reaction, like bullet-ghosts. And undoing that with mods would be trivial and inevitable too. I don't know, it's a weird one. The people who want to shoot kids in a game can already fire up mod tools and make it so, can't they? Which is why devs often don't even design or code kids into their game at all.
Of course if someone wants to shoot digital kids they could - I dare say there's mods out there to make the weird-scaled-down-adult-kids in CP2077 killable. Hell, could design their own game if they were so inclined - But that takes skill, and effort. Eh. This is one of those 'vote with wallet' situations, I suppose. On the one hand, I think it's very poor taste, on the other.. I'm not sure at what point the censorship stops if it starts here. Odd side note: I have German GTA Vice City, and aside from an oddity with music tracks there's a dialogue line that I never expected to hear; "you're just a robot" (Paraphrased because my memory is not a steel trap) And there's no blood in the game that I've seen. It seems profoundly stupid to me, who grew up on the bloody versions of GTA and has never murdered anyone.
I fall somewhere in the middle on the question of media being able to influence bad behaviour. Violent behaviour does not track with violent media consumption at all. But on the other hand, there is such a thing as being able to be given a bad idea. I read Jhonen Vasquez comics as a young teen and started carrying a knife around, and fantasized about using it. Happily, common sense kicked in and I voluntarily gave it away, rejecting the line of thought, but it was there, Vasquez' comics put it there, and other kids sadly aren't as self-aware as I was. Unfortunately some of the most bad-idea-giving media are also some of the best media. Vasquez' comics are a satirical masterpiece. 'No Russian' and the kid-evading-capture level in MW2019 are pinnacles of impactful video game storytelling that I'll vividly remember forever. Part of me wants to buy this game specifically for the same reason. If they do it right (somehow, not sure how that would work) it could be a powerful and affecting commentary on our cultural moment. After all, media don't just reflect reality by accident - it's part of their purpose. A sandbox in which to safely explore terrifying ideas about the world in which we live, so that we can come to understand them better. The problem with that is intended audience vs likely audience, of course. You make a game featuring horrible things for discerning adults to mull over, and it gets bought by an army of 14-year-olds with their parents' credit cards. A general industry issue we still haven't found a fix for.
As a data point, Fallout and Fallout 2 - the proper ones, not Bethesda's stuff - not only had kids you could kill in the game, but a "perk" called Child Killer which triggered if you did so... making everyone hate you. However, the EU release removed the children... but didn't remove events scripted around the children: when you reached The Hub, an invisible ghost-child would pickpocket you and steal an item. Which, as an aside, was how you dealt with the pickpocket kids without getting the Child Killer perk: drop all your items except for an explosive with a set timer, allow the kid to pickpocket you, retire to a safe distance. Kaboom: technically not your fault, so the perk didn't trigger.
