Correct the microphone. The role of virtual journalists in the history of computer games

Journalism is always reliability. Even the most ridiculous report in the tabloid makes us for a split second to question our perception of reality – especially if the heartbreaking material is accompanied by a photograph of a flying saucer.

The use of the media and their employees in games makes a virtual adventure a little more real, gives abstract landfills the illusion of credibility.

This technique is opened by developers a long time ago: reporters as the main characters met in old quests Lucasarts And Sierra on-line. Beautifully falling into trouble, beautiful reporters passed into computer games from comics, animated series and films – April O’Neill from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Vicki Weil from Batman, who has triumphantly returned in last year Batman: Arkham City.

Inadvertently taking fatal pictures of the paparazzi, one of the eternal topics of thrillers in any industry (as in the “photo-religion” of Michelangelo Antonioni), by 2000s leaked to the genres of epic three-dimensional adventures ( Beyond Good & Evil) and fps ( BIOSHOCK ). Foreign and military correspondents turned out to be ideal companions (and more often companions) of the hero in the games of all genres, just recall Elena Fisher from Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune , Nicole Collar from Broken Sword and Rebecca Chang from Dead Riding 2: Off the Record.

[Bullet]] Employee Space Channel 5 Ulala equally cleverly controls with a microphone and blaster, not forgetting to dance from competer-competitors with Channel 42 and Space Pirate BroadCasters.

Journalism is present in KI at all conceivable technological levels, from newspapers in Bully to the virtual TV presenter Eliza Cassan from the Picus TV channel from Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Journalists are more often resistant to viruses that turn humanity into hordes of bloodthirsty zombies (like a rocheus from Left 4 Dead 2 and Frank West from Dead Riding ). In the distant future, they affect the outcome of global interplanetary military operations (Cape Lokwell from Starcraft 2 ) and confront the armies of dancing aliens (Ulala from Space Channel 5 And Space Channel 5: Part 2 ). In real life, television journalists are not so often dancing in front of the armies of shaking antennas of humanoids, but the developers of computer games are generally rarely in the intricacies of the profession.

Radio wave

The whole series Grand Theft Auto built around the radio cult – only in GTA 4 The Internet and some kind of television appeared in Franchaise.

Radio in games Rockstar Games -This is a mirror of the events (news), an instrument of ruthless social comment (talk shows) and a means of decorating the surrounding reality (music).

Instead of beautiful reporters, there are talkative DJs (Ruslan from Vladivostok FM in GTA 4 and Sage from the Alternative Music station Radio X from GTA: San Andreas ). Sterne Shock-Zhekei sketched with Rush Limbo and Howard (Richard Bastion from GTA 4 and Martin Siriosis from Addon The Lost and Damned ) release vulgar jokes against invited celebrities and shout at the innocent listeners calling the studio.

Musical stations delight us with hip-hop-one western and eastern coasts, an action rose and alternative music of the 1990s, but during long moves we are increasingly switching to talk shows.

In K-Chat from GTA: Vice City (under the leadership of Amy Shekenhausen), Jesz Torrent from the Love Fist group, actors, American football players, feminists, naturalists and even the god Tor-.

[[Bullet]] Something like this, gaming developers imagine the work of the average TV reporter.

San Andreas was especially stood out by West Coast Talk Radio, owned. There was an AREA 53 program, the current show I Say/You Say in the style of “capitalists against the Communists”, which regularly received calls from the real New York DJ Lazlo Jones, in the 1980s, dismissed from V-Rock in Wais City And for six years now he has been looking for a new work on the radio.

The WCTR News service in San Andreas reported on the theft of experimental military aircraft and other plot surprises; The Wild Traveler program parodied popular science programs about the life of animals, and in the Entertaining America show the first host was shot down by the movie star on the air, and the second was thereby Lazlo Jones.

With each new GTA series, the Satire on the media became the most topical: the Weazel News channel (easily recognizable conservative Fox Channel Rupert Murdok) was attended by GTA 4) www.Weazelnews.Com ) and televerse.

[Bullet]] For the Western ear, the Japanese radio Jet Set Radio is not much different from the official.

In the news we were informed about closed bridges, a shootout in the Triangle night club, a ban on an online poker, road traffic jams, an increase in the popularity of hybrid cars and amphetamines, arson in a hov-beach, a war with terrorism, global warming, caught from the river with a decapitated corpse, war bikers, Return of the DJ of Lazlo on the radio after six years of absence and much more.

The WCTR from San Andreas to GTA 4 replaced the conservative station We Know The Truth and the liberal Public Liberty Radio, symbolizing the growing division of US residents into political views. So, through virtual radio waves, GTA developers spoke on social and political topics.

Living radio Batman: Arkham City Obviously built Rocksteady Studios Under the influence of the famous Rockstar series. There is something to listen to with a special device – from negotiations of journalists to ominous short -wave number of rooms. For example, the famous television journalist Vicki Weil (one of the many Batman girlfriends), who is transferring The Vicki Vale Show from 5 to 8 pm, every working day at a frequency of 105.7 Gotham City Radio.

Illegal pirate radio – the main weapon of the fight against the mainstream, the Establischman and government propaganda. Wildstyle Pirate Radio from Vice City also copes with these tasks in different games (the leading station was the New York DJ Mr. Madzhik, who died in 2009), and the announcer from Burnout 3: TakeDown (voiced by the real DJ Theodore Strayker), and the revolutionary DJ Betty Boom from Tropico 3.

[Bullet]] DJ Magic from GTA: Vice City actually broadcast Rap Attack at the New York Station of WhBi-FM and all the 1980s fought with DJ Red Alert with the hated WRKS-FM on the basis.

On the pirate radio Japanese Roller Exchanes Jet Set Radio And Jet Set Radio Future The professor did not only explain to us where to go and where to draw graffiti, but also taught the basics of survival on the streets of cruel Sibui, he helped to understand the hierarchy of cyberotaka, a variegated hooligans and girls on roller skates, not forgetting to put a good Funk, Rock, Jay -, hip-, trip- and other hop.

The absence of normal radio is effectively used in post-apocalyptic games-jingla, talk shows and interviews with famous actors are replaced by old cod and screaming semi-humble survivors of Fallout 3 survivors in Galaxy News Radio.

Photo -finish

Photojournalism – an innocent process of fixing static images, at times leading to a collapse of individuals, organizations and states – could not remain outside the field of attention of game developers for a long time.

Back in 1990 in Arkad The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin For Sega Genesis Spider-Man could take pictures of the bosses and sell pictures in the Daily Bugle newspaper, and spent the proceeds on a liquid web.

Then, a fair photojournalism was replaced by a photo hunting & Evil), research (bioshock) and field (Dead Riding) photo.

[Bullet]] Long -term photo deaul Dead Rising clearly demonstrates the difference in skill between the strong professional Frank “I took pictures of wars” Vesta and the mediocre paparazzi Kent Svenson.

In the adventure Beyond Good & Evil (2003) The whole plot is twisted around the photo. The fate of the Miner planet Helly, the race of alien invaders of the DUMC, the galactic special forces corps of the alpha and the insurgent organization IRIS are decided by a series of professional pictures made by the photo -officer Jade. Oblocing photos lead to the mass uprising of the Hitellians.

But for the history of video games, it is much more important in Beyond Good & Evil the opportunity to take pictures of the local fauna and sell them to the scientific center. In total, 56 species of animals were present in BG & E – from the white dog Canis Canis and Aedis Raymanis mosquito to the Anemonia Mutabillis volcanic sponge, Cyclopeus Palustris mucous membrane, MEGAPTERA ANAEROBIA space whale.

In the process of a photomarathon, the brilliant developer Michel Ansel forced the player to look closely at the smallest details of the surrounding world, which we would not pay the slightest attention without a camera (say, the petrified remains of Teratosaurus Imperator).

[[Bullet]] In Bioshock, photographs of dead students are only part of Sander Cohen's creative plan. But when he still comes to see his own pictures in real artistic installation!

True, Ansel was far from the discoverer of this mechanics. A year earlier, a thorough scan of the environment was present in the shooter Metroid Prime (2002, Retro Studios ) on the console Gamecube , And in 2003, an adventure game was released on the same platform The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker , where we took a photo of unprecedented animals with the help of Steampankovsky "Pictocles". Developers Nintendo They stepped even further than the Ansel: initially, with the help of photoconcons, Link could take only black and white pictures, and before color photo it was necessary to upgrade, caught a rainbow firefly.

In Bioshock (2007, Irrational Games ) the camera was not involved in the plot (except for the Fort "Merry", where Sander Cohen ordered us a small photo project), but seriously influenced the gameplay.

Skillfully built-up compositions “Loosing a pipe of the mutant gromil” or “Running through the ceiling of a mutant spider in a carnival mask” led to an increase in the health of the protagonist Jack, an increase in the amount of wearable genetic material and distributing free plasmids and gentonics. You need a certain skills and skills of playing in FPS in order to click on the Anfas attacking Bolshoi Daddy.

In the Survival Excel Dead Riding (2006, Capcom), photographer Frank West was rewarded not only for courage, but also for a creative approach to craft. In addition to terrible, cruel, funny and dramatic pictures, it was possible to make erotic personnel, which introduced freedom to the mainstream video games, previously accessible only in highly specialized hentai-symoles. When a female NPC appeared, a 30 -frames resource were exhausted very quickly – I had to run to the photo department for batteries.

[Bullet]] In Dead Riding 2: Case West, all pictures of dissected and devoured corpses are taken with a cheap soap dish and crooked hands of a professional motorcyclist.

The dark side of the life of the photojournalist in DR was represented by a psychopath Kent Svenson – Paparazzi in a red vest. He calls Frank to photo deuel and dreams of shooting the exact moment of turning a person into a zombie.

Of course, the hero of the game is not necessary to be a professional photocoro to pick up the camera: in the add -on DEAD RISING 2: CASE WEST Motorocyclist Chuck Green clicks, Karl Johnson from San Andreas is fond of amateur photo, the camera helps in solving the puzzles Myst 4: Revelation; The essence of the whole series of Japanese Fatal Frame horror are skillfully using the camera to combat ghosts.

Pictures of enemies, objects, NPCs and decorations are taken by representatives of related ones with reporter professions, and the penetration of normal smartphones into the world of video games leads to the fact that heroes can photograph everything, always and everywhere.

In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, we shoot a UFO on the phone in barrels, football gates, sky, above statues, in trees, underground garage, aquarium, store shelves, tunnel, dock.

The revolution will not be shown on TV

Video journalism in games can achieve various curious effects. How can I forget Elena Fisher in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (2007, Naughty Dog ), not parting with his camera during parachute jumps and traveling on a water motorcycle, but still dropping a video camera (given the trouble in which she was not surprising).

In the first series Uncharted, Fisher has its own Discovered transmission on cable television (acting as a presenter, producer and operator) and sponsor Harry’s Casino the adventures of Nathan Drake. IN Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Elena is a military correspondent, walking, accompanied by an operator along the streets of Nepal, but in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception She is already a well -known special corner in Yemen.

[[Bullet]] Before Dead Rising, the art of erotic photography was not practiced in games without a reddening Japanese schoolgirl on a box.

In one of the Batman: Arkham City missions, the hero also saves a pretty television journalist Vicki Weil from Joker snipers, and in Dead Ring 2 there is a beauty Rebecca Channel 6 Action News with a microphone in his hand in his hand. Vale and Chang are rare examples of television workers sympathizing with the main characters.

The vast majority of people from blue screens are frankly hostile. The faint of heart is better not to watch news in Max Payne or infamous , Do not listen to reports Abe’s Exoddus , Diegler's hairdryer programs from Beyond Good & Evil and Donnie Vermillion from Starcraft 2.

The announcer of the Interplanetary News Service Universal News Network Cape Locuell is neutral to the adventures of the rebels of Jim Raynor and is less loyal to the emperor Dominion Arcturus Mengsk, but in order to fully defeat the censorship and editing of Vermillion, Rainor has to capture UNN's headquarters Unn.

True, even among the villains who have settled in a virtual TV there are real journalists. Reporter Tony Ruds Canal Channel 10 News from Condemned 2: Bloodshot Heroically leads a direct report on his own dismemberment, and Cassandra Blair and William Frank from Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars talk about the worst military events.

The investigation leads a reporter

Classical paper journalism is used in the ancient genre of video games – Adventure. True, the developers of quests and cut -out Survival Horror vaguely imagine a journalistic investigation.

The real adventures of Bob Woodvordo and Karl Bernstein, studying the details of the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post newspaper, are excellent material for a thoughtful logical game. Heroes at their own peril and risk neatly add up a political puzzle leading to the resignation of Richard Nixon. But instead of comparing the facts, looking for reliable sources of information and persuading people to share information for publication, reporters (male reporters are rare in quests) take a shower, stagger in dark mansions and fall into the hands of bloodthirsty maniacs.

[[Bullet]] Usually compromising photos lead to a divorce of celebrities or the resignation of a congressman, but in Beond Good & Evil the result of photo shoots Jade is the revolution.

Madison Page from Heavy Rain (2010, Quantic Dream ) and addon Heavy Rain Chronicles: The Taxidermist – record holder for the number of sudden attacks from serial killers. She should go into the house, as female dummies, a fresh corpse and a nuclear with a chainsaw are found in it.

Only in the main game Page (in the past – a military correspondent from Iraq) can be poisoned, prepared, stabbed, suffocate from smoke, burn alive, fall out of the window, die from explosion of gasoline canist, be shot and discarded from the stairs.

IN Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Temples (1996, Revolution Software ) our first meeting was held with the French journalist Nicole Collar working on the La Liberty newspaper. Work Nicole does not play a special role in the plot, its main function is to be stolen at the right time, so that George Stobbart is something to do. In the 2009th remake The Director’s Cut The profession of collar is devoted to an additional headquarters.

IN Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror (1997) Nicole is abducted at the very beginning (it is difficult to collect material for an article on artifacts of Mayan civilization with a poisoned dart in the neck), and then it holds most of the game, dying from the bite of a poisonous snake. IN Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon (2003) Nicole is interrogated under the muzzle of a pistol, and in Broken Sword: The Angel of Death (2006) She is considered killed.

In the classic quests of Roberta Williams The Colonel’s Bequest (1989, Sierra on-line ) And The Dagger of Amon Ra (1992) Lara Bow, a novice journalist who graduated from Tulein University of Louisiana in New Orleans.

[Bullet]] If the commander Shepard forgot to hit the reporter at the Mass Effect 1, then in Mass Effect 2 he not only beats al-Jilani in the eye, but also regrets aloud about the possibility of possibly lost in the first part.

The Dagger of Amon Ra begins as a real simulator of a young reporter: the action takes place in the 20s of the last century in New York, where one of the major newspapers instructs a young employee to write a report on the exhibition of Egyptian relics. After the corpse of a philanthropist exhibition is found in the sarcophagus, The Dagger of Amon Ra turns into a detective from the journalistic simulator.

In the quest Ripper (1996, Take-Two Interactive Software) in New York the nearest future Virtual Held reporter Jake Quinlan is following the trail Urban Runner (1996, COKTEL VISION ) American journalist Max collects material for an article from the life of European drug dealers in Paris.

IN The dig (1995, Lucasarts) in the staff of the SCATTLA team "Atlantis" is Maggie Robbins – journalist and expert in linguistics. There is no sense in the Maggie-journalist, but as a linguist she translates the speech of the dead alien on the deserted planet Kokit, where her group inadvertently threw a giant asteroid atwal, which had turned into an alien starship, atil.

[[Bullet]] In uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Elena Fisher shows Drake on his video camera the plot segments missed by him.

Since the issues of impartiality and objectivity of the presentation of information, journalistic ethics and freedom of the press in quests do not rise in principle, easier and honestly make the hero a reporter of a healthy tabloid. Zak McCherken from Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (1988, Lucasfilm Games) worked in the yellow newspaper The National Inquisitor and dreamed of Pulitzer Prize, but wrote about tourists who were attacked by two -headed squirrels.

The plot of Zak McKracken is the most journalistic of all the mentioned quests. This is a completely standard tabloid story about the students of Yale University, aliens who have stolen on another planet, stunning humanity with interference in telephone signals, Egyptian pyramids, shamans, Stonehenge, a giant face on Mars, Bermuda Triangle and Elvis Presley.

Modern reality comes to computer games – the main characters began to acquire cameras in phones. In the real world, blogging everywhere crowns professional journalism. A NPC blogger, The Celebinator from Addon, appeared in video games Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony , Closed from the Los Angeles network gossip of Perez Hilton. The secret of the profession in the game is completely revealed: until they beat, the blogger writes the truth about celebrities; And when they beat, he begins to write nasty things about the statue of happiness.

In the new wave of journalistic games, we will more often meet television and photojournalists and more and more often YouTube Video and photo stations on social networks. Following Eliza Kassan, all reporters in the studios will become twice virtual, websites will replace newspapers, the online radio will come to replace the license plates.

But the essence of the focus will not change from this: we are told about the latest news of the non -existent world, which with each report, blog and photography becomes a little more real.

Four prototypes of game reporters

"Gambling" represents you a number of historical personalities, who would not be, computer games would be left without luminaries of photo, television, printed and radio journalism.

Frank West/Hunter Thompson

Photo journalist-freelancer, who shot the wars who survived the zombie epidemic in the city of Villamet, Colorado (Dead Riding), and wrote a Bestseller book about these heartbreaking events, Frank West seems to be a very implausible character.

But compared with Meskalinovo-LSD-Cocaine biography, the inventor of the Gonzo-journalism of Hunter Thompson (Puerto Rico, the year of life with Los Angeles bikers, “Fear and disgust in Las Vegas”) Frank Tusklo and Fursuing.

Obviously imitating Thompson (also, by the way, living in Colorado), West goes to Fortun City, Nevada, where in search of his own fear and disgust it changes its wrestler and destroys zombies in Dead Ringing 2: Off the Record.

Rebecca Chang/Bill Stuart

In the final Dead Ring 2, the television journalist Rebecca Chang without any warning turns out to be shot by guard Ramond Sullivan.

The surprise and brutality of the episode makes us recall the real murder of the ABC Channel Bill Stuart in Nicaragua in June 1979. In the midst of the civil war between the dictator Anastasio Somos Debail and the revolutionary movement of the Sandinists, the minibus with correspondents was stopped at the Chekpont of Government Forces in Managua.

The young lieutenant of the National Guard laid the stewart waving the white flag on the ground and calmly shot him in the back of his head while the operator Jack Clark took all this on film. The report on the same evening began to twist through all the world channels, which ultimately led to a fall in the somosa regime.

Lara Bow/Clara Bow

The direct prototype of Lara Bow from the Sierra’s quest dilogy is the almost complete namesake of Clara Bow – the legendary actress of silent (and then sound) cinema. Clara specialized in the image of feminists in a short skirt and a famously tapped hat on the back of the head – the so -called Flopperha, but there is not a single journalist among the heroines played by Bow.

The first real reporter appeared in the mass culture of the United States in 1928 (two years after the events of The Dagger of Amon Ra) in the Broadway play “First Street”: Hildi Johnson from the Chicago newspaper Examiner, saving an unjustly accused person from the death penalty. In the most famous film adaptation, “His Friday Girl” 1940, Hildi plays Rosalind Russell.

Lazlo Jones/Lazlo Jones

The real life of the New York DJ Lazlo Jones is not as diverse as the fate of his double from the Grand Theft Auto universe: he was not expelled from the V-Rock station in the 1980s (GTA: Vice City), he did not lose his job at Chatterbox FM in 2000s (GTA 3) and has no drives to the police for exhibitionism.

But the real radio show Lazlo (expelled from all official radio waves The Lazlow Show, now available in Internet broadcasts on the site Lazlow.Com ) Very reminiscent of Integrity 2.0 in style and content. Invited stars at a real lazlo smaller than that of a fictional (mainly second -bit comedians from the Saturday Night Live television show), but in life, like in the game, computer geeks adore the program and hate the girlfriends of the protagonist.