Join us in ModLab (Fine Arts 215) on March 11 at 12:15 when Professor Jillian Sayre leads us in a Well Played session of Call of Duty: Black Ops.
In a recent installment of his “Clueless Gamer” segment, Conan O’Brien played Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. During that segment, O’Brien expresses puzzlement at a moment in the game when his player character is at a funeral and he is prompted to press a button to “pay respects.” During this Well Played session, we’ll return to Black Ops (2010), a game in which the player is prompted not to “pay respects” but rather to torture an interrogation subject.
We will play through this section of the game and discuss how and why games require interaction in moments that are not actually changeable through the player’s action. How can we think about this forced participation in the torture scene as an overlap of procedure and narrative in the game?