Double Tap

[Music] okay good morning hey I have two pieces of housekeeping to start with first I need to remind you all to please fill out your evaluations after the talk not 15 minutes before the end but you'll receive them then and yeah then fill them out and do that thing and the second is to turn off your phones or put them on silence I've been told to say that I would say that anyway because you should and right now I'm praying my phone is off or on silence I'm pretty sure it is pretty sure it is first thank you all so many of you for coming this morning I know it is early and there are lots and lots of other brilliant talks you could be at it means it genuinely means a lot to see you here

I had a bet last night that there would be 13 people in the room and there's more than that maybe there's 13 that Sid Meier's talk I don't know thanks also to GDC for inviting me it is genuinely an honor to be here it's an honor to be part of the conference it's on an honor to be part of the advocacy track which is always special and feels particularly important this year my name is Steve Cohen on the game designer I do other things apart from games as well but also I talk and that's why I'm here I don't know how many people in this room have seen me talk before I always feel like before I start I should kind of warn people a bit I don't want to disappoint anyone because life is short and the worst thing you can do is is waste time double tap is a story I mean it's a bunch of stories really it's arranged around thoughts on life and game design

I write something like this every year and present them around the world these things conferences colleges wherever I get invited this is actually my seventh piece it's about an hour long there is no downloadable powerpoints there is no succinct tweetable take away on workflow pipelines you will not get any advice about shader techniques today sorry there's no easy headline at the end of the talk to report back to your studio and there will not be a Q&A at the end either though you can talk to me I'd love you to find me here or online I'd love to talk to you either Twitter email whatever one of the reasons one of the main reasons I do these talks is to meet new people so please do that double tap was written in 2016 preparing for today meant revisiting words that I had not seen in nearly a year and so much has changed since then and so much of that has changed for the

worse the rise of the populist right feels like a nightmare I want to stop this tumbling descent this asphyxiation of empathy and I don't feel like I can I am just one person and that's how I feel as a straight white male priviledge incarnate I'm sure the work way the world has changed has affected some of you out there far more directly than it's affected me so I wanted to say at the start that I stand with all of you my friends who fight as they have their rights stripped away with Muslims people of color the LGBTQ community with women I stand with anyone who feels targeted by power I love you and I will fight for you and I will look after you as much as I can that feels like a dumb pointless thing to say like what does it actually mean it's just words what can I do

privilege or not I am just one voice not rich not clever not anything just you know a snowflake but it is not pointless words do matter taking a stand matters at the very least taking a stand means other people feel like they can stand to stand with you so I wanted to say this before we started I wrote double-tap a year ago as a collection of fragments around a theme and please I want you to take whatever you want from those fragments my intention at the start was to make you ask questions about the games that we choose to make and the games that we choose to play but there are other threads in the piece too and some of those feel more relevant now than ever our lives are short often much shorter than we expect or deserve and when we die all of us whoever we are rich powerful poor privileged or not get to leave two things behind the first is our

work whatever that is and the second is the impact we have on other people that is how we are remembered and measured that is how future generations will remember and measure those in power making spiteful selfish decisions today and that is how you will be remembered to measure to so leave a positive effect on the world in everything you have everything you make every conversation you have in every person you touch that is all we can do we can stand up that's what double-tap means for me now and I hope you find some meaning in it too [Music]

the most human I've ever felt inside a video game was while I was lying face-down in a bush doing nothing Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon was published 16 years ago in 2001 a third-person shooter developed by Clancy's own Red Storm entertainments the player takes the role of the leader of a squad of ghosts it's a video game but these are not fun bright pac-man ghosts this is a Tom Clancy videogame and the ghosts here a gruff American soldiers so called because they are skilled enough to ghost through combat situations unseen like all of Clancy's work Ghost Recon is led

heavy with power fantasy and military pornography though its rhythm is more cautious more thoughtful than arcade shooters like Call of Duty this is the sort of game that requires patience that takes guns seriously and demands that you do the same this is the sort of game that feels like it belongs on a PC controlled by players whose shallow skin seems permanently illuminated by centuries of monitor glow spines curved to accommodate keyboard and mouse gameplay dank caves echoing to military box issued over air traffic control headsets but 15 years ago I was a console gamer as I played the game with my friends on Xbox Live not long after Microsoft service launched and it was nor could fit as ports often our ghost recons keyboard controls digital inputs that let you issue binary pulses to your characters nervous system and communicate simple commands to your squad and maps across more than a dozen different buttons and as fans of dumb

internet arguments doubtless now controlling even the simplest shooter on a console is very different to controlling one on a PC aiming and firing with a mouse is so simple effortless and spining and double-clicking on the Microsoft Excel icon after your first cup of coffee on a Monday morning but Swaim a gun on a console that's more challenging you push the crosshairs you correct course and you lock-on firing the gun though that's basically the same on both formats with a mouse you press a button with a joypad a trigger it's just a gentle squeeze or two if you want to be absolutely sure games are about cause and effect inputs and outputs call and response while most media does its best to entertain through

instruction alone tireless preachers delivering calculated manipulative monologues just like this one games are or at the very least pretend to be dialogues that is what makes us different that is our strength that's what game design is when designing a game you are considering two things consciously or otherwise what are the questions that I want to ask the player and how will they answer those questions the questions that we ask those are the shape of the game can you save the princess can you make that headshot but the players experience is defined by the limited answers they can give defined by the actions that we let them perform inside our world we put words in their mouths so we have to choose those words so carefully and that is game design what are the answers we create for the player which of those answers do we think they'll choose which do we want them to choose and so on

those responses must be delivered by the player to the game via an interface and that interface inevitably forms part of the answer to a first person shooter controlled with a joypad is one thing the same game controlled with a keyboard a mouse is very very different neither is a perfect simulation the latter is more instinctive the formal more interesting I think both give the impression of a but not the same as aiming the way you fire on each format is a better match just a gentle flex of the index finger so the players experiences this are answers to our questions and the manner in which they deliver those answers as designers that aren't many ways we can solicit a response and so our choice often comes down to two things analog or digital analog or digital analog systems measure that measure the degree of input

the pressure the direction the weights applied by the player digital systems they simply register a change of states a button can be on or off analog systems offer nuance they let the player express caution in their answer they can edge towards a blind corner then change their mind digital systems they're useful for decisions when you play a video game you are the captain of a vessel the system turns to you and says captain the button gives the yes or the no the button tells the system to fire there is no maybe if you want to feel something demonstrate humanity which is often rooted in doubt and uncertainty analog systems matter if you only want to do something you can think digitally you tap a button and in some systems to show you are absolutely

certain you DoubleTap mo2 farm is a multiplayer map in Tom Clancy's Call of Duty Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon as the name suggests the map is centered around a ruined farmhouse in clearing surrounded by what I remember to be dense jungle I might be misremembering the map takes place at night and I never saw the jungle close up I didn't see much beyond the dirty white texture of a farmhouse wall and a jagged pixel plane of some billboard bushes in in my soldiers feet there were four of us on my team there was me my friend Simon my colleague mark and my boss shall this was our first match together we sat in a 4v4 Team Deathmatch Lobby and we waited for the opposition slots to fill we made in joke small talk war movie cliches

mark mark would be the brains Simon Simon would be the Maverick Gao he would be the tough love leader cool under pressure ready to take the heat I I would be the first to die with a soft chime the four empty slots for the other team filled up all at once each new players name had square brackets at the front what does that mean I asked nothing good muttered Zhao and we all chuckled pleased with the Hollywood dialogue this was gonna be great hahaha yeah but what does it mean though asked Simon mark the brains spoke up they're from the same clan it means they do this a lot it means they know

what they're doing oh dear I said I remember the night that Xbox Live launched in the UK the only people were journalists like I was in 2001 or Microsoft employees or players who had applied to beta-test who'd understood what a beta test is we call those players the hardcore an adjective that implies obsessive dedication and often anti-social behavior but the atmosphere that night was not aggressive or even competitive it was singing with joy and curiosity and friendship a thousand strangers on their first night on an Internet cruise ship marveling at the vessel fumbling for the right etiquette deathmatch is the first-person shooter turned for a simple kill or be killed multiplayer fights where death as so often in video games is an inconvenience

it's a quick restart and on with the show like lots of videogame neologisms we don't think about the etymology it's so Universal that it's its own thing now like the word videogame itself from masters of doom David Q Sheena's 2004 history of its software John Romero comments on the words origin sure it was fun to shoot monsters but ultimately they're soulless creatures controlled by a computer now gamers could play against spontaneous human beings opponents who could think and strategize and scream we can kill each other if we can get this done this is going to be the [ __ ] coolest game that the planet Earth has ever [ __ ] seen in its entire history and he was right I guess in a deathmatch game of unreal Championship on the very first night of xbox live inside of science fiction warehouse on an empty

server I hopped and skipped and bounced around until I stumbled upon a second player a low poly Space Marine spinning and staring at the ceiling it seemed poor form to just you know shoot him so I called down from my position high up on the scaffolded gantry hello I offer it cautiously oh hey there he said turning his space suit his body his head and his gun to face me he performed this kind of double hop and I read it as delight and then he ran off to another corner of the room and then he ran back again sorry he said I'm just trying to see the Sun if it's there I haven't found it yet I took a look at

the roof above me nothing more than dull rivets and gunmetal panels and then I climbed down the ladder to join my new friend hello again I said I thought about offering my hand but it was attached to my gun so hot instead what's the weather like up there he asked twisting his whole body towards the gantry no Sun either I'm afraid I said I love a good skybox he said I love the feeling there's more in the world to explore even when there probably isn't and double hopped in agreement and we both fell silence this is weird isn't it I said it is a bit he replied more silence headset static it is a bit

weird he added we began to explore the level together in another room God raised cut through precisely engineered rips in a rusting metal ceiling cast are darting shadows as ballroom dancers on the dirt texture floor but we still couldn't see the Sun eventually we were back where we started the gentle conversation drifted to silence and we both knew that we had to bring this relationship to a close somehow so he ventured slowly twisting to face me eyes dead as a mannequin Oakley heavy weapon pointed squarely at my guts should I shoot you now

the phrase DoubleTap predates videogames and has an established meaning outside our weird parochial language it is not just a second press of X developed by British police chiefs in Shanghai in the 30s the DoubleTap is the practice of firing two shots in quick succession into the same location it is an exercise in pragmatism the purpose being to ensure a target is functionally disabled for example a person may rolling the dice survive a single shot to the head but survive to is vanishingly unlikely so force those odds pull the trigger twice double tap in an online essay for NRA magazine American Rifleman entitled the art of the DoubleTap writer Matt lindlar describes the practical difficulties of executing what in sync and what in theory sounds like a simple

maneuver it takes time and ammunition to learn to rebound from recoil quickly enough to conduct a second tap writes lindlar begin by quickly firing two aimed shots at a target with a safe background continue until you can consistently put two shots within five inches of one another in one to two seconds under a subheading why not a triple tap lindlar argues that a case can be made for putting as many bullets as it takes into a bad guy the NRA often referred to their targets as bad guys before arriving at the conclusion that really two shots should probably be enough these days he elements' you have to defend your actions to the world language changes as we change and double-tap has taken on an even more sinister meaning in the last few days last few years

it describes the practice adopted by terrorists of a secondary attack in the same location as the first designed to target first responders abdel hamid abode one of the ringleaders of the paris attacks returned to the batterer clan he stood outside as the emergency services struggled to deal with the unthinkable and then he ran inside the theater gunmen moved from body to body checking to see if their targets were still alive DoubleTap games highlighted by Google in a search for game of the Year 2015 The Witcher blood borne Metal Gear Solid 5 until dawn fallout 4 rise of the Tomb Raider Arkham Knights

halo 5 splatoon call of duty black ops 3 and rocket League down well a short playful indie game from that same year is described as delightful and charming and I do not disagree with that it is kinetic responsive instinctive stylish and fun but it is a game where your objective is to destroy everything you can firing guns from your feet as you fall down a well black room Romero's first-person shooter pitch describes itself on its abandoned Kickstarter page as a return to vast violence and masterful play it promises that each weapon has a specific use and does the damage that makes you feel good gun sports is a bright beautiful smart take on volleyball that is intelligently designed and so fun to play where you use sleek expensive sports

styled weaponry to shoot a ball over a net and into a goal 20 million people have played the cartoon style Team Fortress 2 on Steam collectively spending 1.4 billion hours killing each other for fun a patch for gta5 still riding high in the sales charts nearly four years after release the fastest selling game of all time allows you to play it in VR and it looks like this of the 50 best-selling video games in the UK in 2015 41 of them involves some kind of shooting mechanic and of those nine that are left eight of them are sports games the other one is Mortal Kombat's it's a

running joke in video games that lovable rogue Nathan Drake is actually a mass murderer your first action in uncharted 2 is to kill some minimum-wage security guards who are trying to protect a national museum you will have triggered the death animations of around 800 more simulated people by the time the credits roll ha ha ha the night of the Parrish shootings felt grimly familiar viewed through the telescopic lens of the Internet like a bad dream unreal inescapable closing your eyes and knowing what's about to happen and praying that it's not a cold news ticker reads gunfire reported the absence of information slowly shaded in with gruesome detail and there is nothing you can do as your stomach drops

just gawk at the live blogs as the horror unfolds and the numbers rise keep watching as the body count climbs you know that you're being ghoulish but you can hardly return to the game you were playing not now many of my friends who make video games the people who read when I write who listen when I talk who come to events like this people like you a young empathic anti-gun outspoken and whenever there's another mass shooting in the US the other [ __ ] day I see the ones who live there speak out [ __ ] the NRA the Second Amendment has to change America has a problem what will it take before we are compelled to do something about that the Europeans they offer sympathy and words of advice they are horrified and relieved it's not our problem just like when we hear gunfire televised from the Ukraine from Syria from Palestine from Iraq the day after

Paris I watched the same people struggle to deal with bloodshed much closer to home there was so much sadness and anger and above all a lack of comprehension how could anyone do this how could anyone do this hear that phrase thrown into the void with no expectation of an answer because the question is drowning in thousands of years of politics and religion and history and hate but still how could anyone do this how could anyone anyone do this how could anyone switch off another human like a lights how can you look a gun and not feel revulsion at a tool designed to do just that and then slowly the red mist of other people's blood fades and we drift back to our lives where we play and we write about and we promote and we create games so many of which

fixate on and profit from those same tools the game began and our team spawned outside the farmhouse it was a nighttime map pitch black put on your night sights commanded Zhao you'll see better the gray and black world became a green and black world but that felt fancy and military sure I scanned the jungle in the distance can't see much but they're out there I paused for dramatic effect somewhere then from nowhere gunfire move get inside shouted Zhao and our group made a dash for the farmhouse entrance but there was no

entrance or we couldn't find it at least perhaps because we had our night sights on and everything was green and confusing so we kept running and we ended up on the other side of the house crouching in different bushes ok said Simon what now sure our changed to stance from prone to crouch walk I've got this he said with comforting confidence the entrance is over here somewhere his words were abbreviated by two precise shots from somewhere in the darkness and I watched his bright green body slump into the shadows on the floor I don't know how this is going right I've no idea how this is going I do not know what you're thinking I don't get to control that I do not have complete control over this situation I have some

here is a theory life is a terrifying collision of a billion events that are all out of your control from beginning to end we are offered choices decisions questions and the answers we give have little to no bearing on the results you take the dream job and it makes you miserable you find the right guy but you're the wrong girl you live a cautious life and then you get hit by a stray bullets that unpredictably that unpredictability that lack of foresight is important because if this thing was a movie if we knew what was going to happen then we would sleep our way through it the question marks they keep us awake the unknown is terrifying and confusing but it is also thrilling we

cannot see the future except sometimes sometimes for a moment we can there are brief tiny moments in life where things feel wholly under our control where we get to decide what happens and they are relief when I hit the light switch and I know that the light is going to turn on and then the light turns on for a microsecond I am a prophet and the more complex and skillful that action the more weight and satisfaction the action carries the right key goes in the right lock and it turns first time I changed the batteries in the remote and it works again if I can throw this ball of paper in that bin I will find true love in each case we imagine what happens we

make it happen and that makes us momentarily happy that we have managed not just to predict the future but engineer it we are God's tiny gods who operate light switches video games of that level of control inconsequential satisfaction offered in a completely safe environment we are asked a question we supply an answer from the choices that were offered we think we know what's going to happen next and then usually it does over and over again each action we perform has some kind of predictable consequence and shooting is a perfect example of that you aim you see the future you fire and the enemy falls down but it's not the only example so why are we so fixated on firearms I mean history plays a part of course we've been killing things since space war and every game prepares you for the next the performance side of

firing a weapon matters to players our actors guns are the perfect prop the sound and the fury the glamour the forbidden cool those things play the part but I think the main reason is that shooting is such an easy understandable solution to challenge for us as designers it's a discrete action with a binary result that can be layered to alter difficulty you make a digital choice touch the trigger and after that you lose control the bullet continues towards a future that you can no longer alter but one that you have anticipated you're a tiny god now can you shoot two things what about four but they're further away don't worry they're bad guys fine but the game designers portrayal is by necessity an idealized sanitized sketch of a gun when we points and click when we respond to the violent

leading question asked by the developer with the only answer that they let us give yes and yes again the result is unemotional a 1 or a 0 quick and effective as turning out a lights there is no recoil beyond the spinning wear of our haptic feedback it is clean and it is satisfying a head shot is always an instant kill if the consequences of shooting a real gun with that kind clinical binary the DoubleTap would not exist a bullet is not fictional but physical a piece of metal may be the size of the tip of your little finger at the rear of the bullet is a primer which when struck creates a small explosion that explosion ignites the propellant in the middle section of the bullets the propellant produces gas which accelerates the bullet down the gun barrel as it leaves it's traveling

around 300 meters a second a speed so fast we can't register it as movement the result of firing a gun is effectively instantaneous to us points click done we avoid detail we do not think about what actually happens when a bullet strikes skin and bone we know this is not really an off switch but it feels like one partly because of its treatment inmate Media Hollywood and our own and partly because of the speed at which it happens we want to feel the challenge we don't want to feel the horror so slow it down slow it all the way down the bullet which has no mind of its own and simply follows our instructions leave the barrel leaves the barrel of the gun and moves forward until it reaches something reaches something that will provide resistance perhaps that is a wall or perhaps that is the floor in this instance it is a person on contact the bullet punches

through the skin in slow motion millisecond by millisecond a tiny metal fist the skin gives way to tissue and the bullet continues pushing it strikes bone and only slows it down a fraction the bone tough but brittle cracks first and then it splinters the bullet pushes the shattered bone to the side and continues forward cuts through more tissue tear another layer of skin out the other side blood rushes into the hole and spills to the floor someone cries out or perhaps they can't speak because their throats is full of blood and they are choking a producer at a major games publisher shows me their World War 2 first-person shooter which begins with an attic opening based on the Normandy landings yeah we wanted it to be as realistic as possible they say we wanted you to feel what it was like to be there the fear the confusion the chaos I noticed

there's no blood in your game I say yeah that's the certification issue they reply to Paris after Paris I decided that for a while at least I would stop playing games about shooting I settled on this definition games where any core mechanic sees the player firing a projectile intended to cause damage that usually means guns but is a wide enough definition to include missiles arrows lightning bolts fireball spells tiny clusters of 2d pixels in side scrollers and red shells loosed from the front of your cart most games are about shooting it turns out it was a restrictive rule what did I discover apart from that right from the start

it made me ask questions all of the time of the material and myself was it guns I was objecting to or violence what about knives what about gun Laden stealth games that give you the option even encourage you to finish them without ever shooting would I play Mirror's Edge what about The Last of Us would I still play down well and I found these answers as I went knives are real so is knife violence but as my exploration was specifically about gun violence and how that dominates the form I would not play Metal Gear Solid I would not play Metal Gear because it's questions are framed around guns even if a valid answer is to avoid them and I wouldn't play mirrors edge either that I completed the first one without firing a shot I stopped playing down well those answers and my frustration at trying to find games I could play made me more show or how I feel I am uncomfortable with games part in how we perceive guns as a clean clinical digital solution to a problem and their

fetish fetish is a ssin a shiny beautiful collectibles or fast fun solutions my silenced or not so silent right now protest was initially against that I don't want to be part of a system that I believe is playing a very real part in sanitizing gun violence but I also started to wonder how our preoccupation with guns affects the questions that game designers are asking because again that is what makes us difference that is what games are a story frame by a series of questions then answered by the player and the only question we are asking time and time and time again is this can you predict where the object will be in a fraction of a second can you stop the bad guy who's in the way it will be clean simple I promise point-and-click maybe a splash of red maybe not even that the player human and predictable optimistic and

violence of the last returns the only answer we give them yes red eye edge 1 2 9 November 2003 on the evening of June 25 Erin Hamel a 45 year old nurse from Knoxville beg you pardon a 45 year old nurse from Knoxville Tennessee was on the i-40 highway through nearby Newports his cousin Denise was in the back passenger seats the power on the way back from him day out in the mountains we were driving down the interstate back from a great trip Denise later told ABC News my cousin said hey look at these flowers and then all of a sudden through the winter came a bullet the heat was so much I could feel it on my lap I saw lots of glass and lots of blood I thought that I'd been shot but she

hadn't the blood belonged to Erin her cousin the driver of a car now now out of control traveling at 70 miles per hour against traffic imagine that covered in blood and glass and God knows what else in a speeding vehicle you have no way of stopping and when the car finally fortunately grinds to a stop against the guardrail imagine looking to the driver's seat and seeing blood gushing from a wound in your cousin's temple head shot instant kill on August 28th 13 year-old Joshua Buckner and his 16 year old step brother William pled guilty to the reckless homicide of Aaron Hamel Joshua had stolen two 22 caliber rifles from his parents closet the week before the shootings and hidden them in the nearby woods on the evening of June 25th the pair headed to a small hill with a line of sight to the i-40 their intention was to shoot at the sides of passing trucks they were bored

they'd been inspired by Grand Theft Auto red eye was a column that I wrote an edge for four years the magazines only voice under a style guide that was pointedly poker-faced and anonymous the editorial staff were very close mark David my editor shower and I and I did my best to voice the thoughts that I felt we couldn't express elsewhere in the magazine in theory truthfully though redeye was my opportunity to show off and say things that might pay people might make people cross a little like today so it was the early 2000 and games were under attack as always it seemed to me that the industry's defense back then was largely to refer to the treatment of heavy-metal music or horror films and decades past I watched Friday the 13th as a kid it didn't turn me into a serial killer it's just hysteria from old folk who don't understand our medium dismiss it I

didn't think this was right I believed in games because they are different from other forms I believe they can change people for better and for worse those questions that they posed the answers they suggest forced the player to change the way they think and that is our medium strength but that power works without conscience anecdotal evidence I know games affect me I play Tetris all day if I play Tetris all day I see blocks when I close my eyes and I know I'm not alone there that's like a phenomenon right the tetris effect that's a known thing and when I play Grand Theft Auto all day if I spend eight hours stealing cars like it's nothing and then I go out into the real world and I walk past a car parked on my street in real life I can feel a tiny part of me a tiny part of me wants to try the lock and I'm not alone in that I

hope I'm not alone in that so I wrote this piece for edge right the first part was a plea for the games industry to take the consequences of their action seriously and adopt a defense less digital than know nothing we make a never influence anyone shut up because why would I care about games if I thought that was true but there was a second target as well the kids who shot Aaron Hamill were not trying to kill him they weren't even trying to shoot people they were being reckless with a gun they'd stolen messing around on a hill attempting to hit the back of trucks as they sped down the freeway that was what they've done in GTA and some part of them should have been screaming this is a terrible idea had been worn away by hours of pixel perfect gunplay in a digital world it turns out that aiming in real life is

more difficult than push correct on an analog stick and actions have more serious consequences I was tired and I still am tired of the way we positioned guns tools explicitly designed to switch off humans like light switches as glamorous cool fun toys the way we smooth over the violence just enough to sell it and even more tired of the way we sell those games to children we know that high schoolers form a huge part of gaming's audience we knew it back then we know how seriously their parents took 18 ratings and we know that today too and we didn't and we still don't fully understand how games affect people but we choose to look the other way so red I went to work magazine covers are full color adverts for an 18 rated product

aimed directly at Under 18's sorry magazine covers a full color adverts for an 18 rated product aimed directly at under-18 I wrote red I would be interested to hear take twos defense against accusations that has been selling an adult experience to minors he wouldn't mind hearing UK magazine publishers doing the same thing since from where red is sitting there an awful lot of people covered in Aaron Hamels blood on page 22 of edge one to nine I accused my employer of acting as neck necessary to murder it was not a great career move worse apparently was was that I'd said the same of take two who were one of the company's main advertisers they called the magazine the same day furious demanding an explanation our publisher who signed off

the pages perhaps without reading them called our editor into the office and she allow my boss took responsibility for my words in the end the whole magazine was collectively disciplined placed on the oversight of a new senior editor and within six months we'd all left edge actions have consequences Giles lifeless carcass body fell to the floor and our team was at without a leader the question the game was asking of us was clear what now what now but there was no one ready to answer someone had to take control and it was the brains mark who moved first clear spoken and assertive with faultless logic he made a decision our enemy must be on the

left side of the farmhouse so he would lead us to cover on the right he stood up wait here he said edging around the building I'm going to check which left Simon and I alone left Simon and I alone completely alone last men standing except not standing lying face down in some bushes I know there are people in this room who are working on games that involve shooting I am not telling you to stop I've started shooting again now I can tell you about that later if we have time I know people like clear lessons from talks that's the way right that's why I gave that warning at the start 40 slides and then a summary telling you

how to feel I like experiences that ask questions and let you answer them in your own way that's why I like video games but some questions are more complex than the trigger can answer so I know and I believe I know games are obsessed with guns and the act of killing specifically shooting you could claim that other parts of pop culture are as much at fault for glamorizing firearms or at least argue that they have more history but our form is different only games let you fire the gun feel the impact the power of the pleasure only games give you control let you answer a leading question yourself and this is the hard bit I believe that only games in roads a little bit of the human part of us that should recoil in absolute horror at the idea of shooting someone I know gaming

can change people I have felt it changed me I want to make games that change people for the better and I believe that you do too I believe gamings obsession with guns is making the world worse by inches or feet or miles I don't know but even if I'm wrong I am certain I know that the default recourse to firing projectiles is limiting games as a form limiting our audience and the stories that we tell I know that shooting is a fundamentally satisfying mechanic but most of that comes from the controller and comes from the way that maps to those singular moments of control prophecy and execution and I believe that there are other mechanics out there as well mechanics that can provide the same feedback offer the same feedback to the player more interesting answers and I know that by those answers is not easy finding those mechanics is not easy either and that will limit your commercial opportunity I

believe that uncharted 4 would have been a much better experience without shooting I know I'm not alone in that but the shooting sells that's why it's there and shooting sells because we haven't taught enough people yet that there are more to games than shooting and I know that earning money is important we all have to do that and sometimes that does come at the cost of making the world a tiny bit worse what's another bullet in the infinite reign of digital gunfire probably doesn't matter but I believe you can make a difference all of you I believe it's worth taking a stand because then others stand with you so if you want to look at what you're doing look at what you're playing look at what you're making look at the impact of your creative choices think about the questions you ask and the words you

force players to repeat over and over and over again think about how you produce analog systems from digital inputs moments that don't just destroy humanity but amplify it because I believe we can do better and I know that because I have seen glimpses of humanity in games and the most human I ever felt in a video game was when I was lying face down in a bush holding a gun that I would never use searching for the right answer to an impossible question Simon and I are facedown in the bushes and Hollywood brave beautiful gun-happy Hollywood writes the script from here this is a buddy picture comedy and tragedy the Maverick and the rookie fighting near blind against the odds gets a team of teenagers who know exactly what they're doing likely the rest of the story runs like

this adrenaline kicks in we surprised ourselves with fast reactions animal instinct honed over a lifetime of shooting we fight back to a situation where maybe we might just might beat the odds and win the gunfire is loud the body count is high it is still nothing like Uncharted near the end one of us almost certainly me get shot pop up delivers an inspirational monologue as we're dying I'm dying the other one almost certainly Simon is the hero in a one-on-one fight against the team's leader there is some bullet ballet the boss drops and we win for sure ow whispers Simon credits roll but here's what actually happened Simon and I stayed exactly where we were

facedown in the bushes where we knew we were safe and we couldn't be seen and twice I couldn't someone from the other team duck out of the jungle and then retreat I tracked them in my crosshairs but I couldn't be sure I would make the shot or even if a single shot would be enough because death is not always digital and besides I knew the gunfire would attract attention so why bother I took my finger off the trigger and I didn't put it back and in those moments Simon and I were human free from a script that we'd been given vulnerable blind for the future where death would come but enjoying the world while we could we made jokes we talked about the game the world considered plans we knew we would never execute we didn't know how to answer the game's questions we barely even knew how to stand up we lay there and we giggled under a bush for seven minutes and it was glorious I looked around and

everything was beautiful I looked up but I couldn't see the Sun not even through my night sights seven and a half minutes after the game started about seven minutes after marking Schiele's death I heard footsteps it's Simon's prone form slowly span on spots as a luminous green ghost ran towards him he didn't have time to make any kind of speech and then the bad guy turned to face me hello I said hopefully half a question only one answer DoubleTap [Music]

[Music] though I have I have I don't know how long do we have how long do we have left three minutes okay okay I have an epilogue but I can tell you the epilogue in the wrap-up room which is 2022 I think that's where I'll be going anyway thank you all so much for coming and thank you for my patient your patience sorry about my voice which went a little bit but you all did very well now we can all nap [Music]

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you