Testosterone: I finally discovered why I hate so many modern games.

It seems like the longer I watch this industry progress, the further from me it moves. It is slowly severing its connections with innovation, artistic expression, or even just plain fun. We see fewer games like ‘Flower’ and more games like ‘Call of Duty’. Fewer games like ‘Zelda’ and more games like ‘Darksiders’. Fewer games like ‘Mario Kart’ and more games like ‘Forza’. The longer I look at it, the worse it seems to get. Profits go up, but my enjoyment goes down.

I never really understood why I felt this way- at least not in any tangible, communicable sense- but finally I figured it out. It’s all because of testosterone. It’s all because of that weird, obscure concept of “manliness” as though it is something that even exists, much less is important.

This all started when I was watching Microsoft’s E3 press conference last week, wondering if I’d find anything interesting (sidenote: I didn’t), when something peculiar happened. Game after game after game came on screen, and gun after gun after gun was fired, and explosion after explosion after explosion was… uh… exploded, but none of it interested me at all. Each time something new was shown, I felt like I’d seen it before. It came across as bland, uninteresting, and generic. I’ve felt this way for a while, but the best I could do to describe it to people was to say that I just didn’t like “realistic” games, or “action-packed” games. These adjectives were close, but they didn’t quite hit the nail on the head. Now, after a few hours of thinking about it, I know exactly why I don’t like all of the games I constantly see, and I think it describes a big part of the reason why Nintendo is the favorite game company of so many.

Let me start with that example that some of you may have found odd: ‘Zelda’ and ‘Darksiders’. A lot of people who played the latter of these two games called it a ‘more mature Zelda’. But no. “Mature” is definitely not the word I would use there. Zelda is mature beyond its appearance, and- much like Pixar movies- has a remarkable way of connecting with wide audiences no matter the age rating or art style. It is, without a doubt, more mature than ‘Darksiders’.

What the reviewers perhaps meant to say is that it was a “manlier” Zelda. One with more testosterone. A game that did its best to fit as many scary faces and big muscles and violence and sweat and blood and darkness and grit as it possibly could into one package- and maybe in that sense it succeeded. But this is the exact reason why I don’t like Darksiders and so many other games in concept. They’re all so uselessly manly.

At the Microsoft conference, they pretty much talked about three things: Guns, sports, and cars. Three of the “manliest” things in existence, and three things that I will never understand the insane hype behind. Why do we suppose they talked about these things?

Anyone?

The answer is that they sell.

Every single one of those games that I “just don’t like” has this one thing in common. They all have guns or sports or cars or scantily clad women or blood or explosions. Just a bunch of stupid, mindless drivel that is put in there not for the sake of gameplay, not for the sake of storytelling, and not for the sake of “making it immersive”. It’s put in there because the people behind these games (Activision, EA, Ubisoft, etc etc etc) know that this is what people are buying. They look at the trends, and make games based around it.

Now, extrapolate this newfound wisdom to the current round of consoles. The PS360 is primarily made up of these testosterone-y games; ones filled with gritty realism, guns, explosions, and whatever else they can fit in there that will validate our existence as “men”, either on a very blatant level (Call of Duty) or a more subtle plane. Even the best games like Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto still strike me as a little dull, despite the fact that I enjoyed similar games on older consoles. There’s just too much realism. Too many guns. Too much badassery. I don’t want to see all of their pores and hairs and each wrinkle on someone’s face. It destroys the atmosphere to have so much detail. I don’t get it.

The Wii? It’s filled with artistic, weird, and unique games. Fragile, No More Heroes, Zelda, Mario, Mario Kart, Muramasa, Little King’s Story, etc. All of the best Wii games don’t concern themselves with testosterone or manliness. They concern themselves with being games, pieces of art, or innovations. No, they aren’t all amazing, but they also aren’t stupid and manly and detailed. I love it.

And you know what the most noticeable difference between Nintendo-platform games (pre-Wii U anyway) and other platforms’ games? The characters. The heroes from the greatest Wii and DS games never have huge muscles, rugged voices, or overbearing personalities. They’re characters like Phoenix Wright, Link, Mario, Travis Touchdown, and Seto. Unique characters about whom you can know something simply by looking at them, and characters who aren’t quite like anyone else you’ve met. Hell, the closest Nintendo has ever come to playing into a stereotype is with Samus and her slim, attractive body. Yet even then, she was born out of breaking a stereotype, and to this day she more often resides in a very thick metallic casing than in her skin-tight under suit.

So, to all of you guys out there who laugh when someone says their favorite developer is Nintendo or that their favorite game is something other than “MANdden NHL 2K10: An Explosion of Testosterone*: It’s not because we’re fanboys. It’s because we just don’t care about your useless, subconscious quest for needing to see the most manly and most explosion-y thing since ‘Avatar’ came out.

We just don’t.