Vampire Zombie Communist Hookers? Patent It!

From Patent # US 2009/0017886 A1: “If the player heeds the higher ideals and seeks the higher path they will be rewarded not with money and jacked cars, but with their soul.” What? More after the jump.

If you’ve read my editorials, you know that I’ve been pushing games towards a more serious path. An intense potential for creating and cultivating emotions and ideas in the players exists in games that is unique among artistic mediums and valuable for it. Dr. Elliot McGucken, a man dedicated to bringing sight to the blind and honoring Joseph Campbell, believes so to. And the way he’s realized this belief is through this patent [via EmCeeGramr on NeoGaf] that makes my stomach churn.

It isn’t all bad. The premises at the heart of this document (and hidden 37 pages in) might be  a little more flowery than what I write in the average editorial, but is in line with my beliefs:

I agree, Doctor - outside of the weird Objectivist overtones... Anyway, what should we do with this new found ability to create meaningful art?

O-..Oh… I was going to suggest something about exploring issues of personal identity or vague ethics, but you seem pretty dead set on this shooting women thing.

What follows this early example is a series of progressively more bizarre flowcharts and write ups, including Communist zombie vampires, magic guns, comparisons between Ron Paul and Jesus and Socrates, and even brings up other game developers – dozens (hundreds?) of potshots clearly aimed at GTA devs Rockstar, a long diatribe about the “fun” of evil in Fallout 3, and a slam against Will Wright for Spore.

McGucken’s philosophical core seems to support a mix of (sometimes contradicting) ethical and metaphysical systems, favoring our Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ, Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, Homer, Socrates, and anyone who can take a magic golden .45 to the head of a Marxist Undead and pull the trigger.

What’s scary, for me, is that this might be exactly what gamers want. A blend of Neo-Classicism, Objectivism, Libertarianism, Christianity, and red-blooded vigilantism is at the core of plenty of the games that McGucken says we should move away from. Kratos, the protagonist of God of War,  is damned near the embodiment of “No Gods or Kings, only Man.” Red Faction: Guerrilla seems to draw more on McGucken’s mix of ideas than on Marx’s. Resurrection fantasies run throughout gaming genres, from FPSes like Painkiller to RPGs like Xenogears (which, on second thought, Dr. McGucken must have written.)

While I feel trepidation in calling out a guy from Princeton who is curing blindness with virtual reality I have to say, there are a few holes here. Look, over and over it seems like what you’re saying is “Do what I feel is right and just or else lose the game.” Turning games into morality plays is a flame that developers Bethesda and BioWare have danced around without burning their wings, allowing for varied ethical systems to come into play and allowing the player to make their own judgments. Ideas of euthanasia, security vs freedom, centralized power, and eugenics are at the core of countless “choice” driven games, and what makes them great is the fact that neither path ends in denial.

Also, dude, it’s spelled B-U-D-D-H-A, not B-U-D-A. I guess they don’t teach spelling at Princeton.

In any case, check out these excerpts organized by the boys over at NeoGaf, then take a look at the full document yourself. Pick out a few favorite lines, and tuck them away. In the future we may even reward the person with the best Dr. McGucken’s Magical Choice Machine quote.