This Game Is Torture

Hands up, everyone who is surprised that a game called The Torture Game 2 finds itself at the center of yet another “games make kids numb to violence” debate. The name alone was guaranteed to raise the hackles of the Videogames Will Bring About the Apocalypse lobby. The chainsaw, spikes and blood didn’t help matters much, either. The game has been called “sick,” “disgusting” and “unspeakable” by its critics. Its creator, 19-year-old Carl Havemann, describes it as “something simple and pointless meant only for entertainment.” Which camp is right – or if both are – depends entirely on you.

Despite the name, The Torture Game 2 really isn’t much of a game at all, just a particularly grisly physics sim. You’re not given any instruction or objectives, but the basic concept is fairly obvious. You’re presented with a variety of tools and weapons with which you may inflict your choice of harm on a male body that’s strung up by his wrists. He’s not particularly realistic looking, more like an animated artist’s maquette than a person, and he doesn’t complain as you slice him open or fill him with lead, merely sways to and fro, spraying blood on a plain black background. There is no way any reasonable person could confuse The Torture Game 2 with real life, and yet I felt undeniably ill at ease as I played it.

At first, I couldn’t figure out why I was so disturbed. I’ve killed thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of virtual creatures, both man and beast, over the course of my game-playing career. I’ve delivered bricks to the head, crushed evil with my butt, shoved bad guys through windows and fired enough ammunition to punch a hole in the moon. I’m long since past the point that on-screen death and dismemberment faze me, so I found my reaction to The Torture Game somewhat puzzling. It wasn’t as though my victim was pleading for mercy, or even so much as uttering a discrete cough to suggest I was being a bit impolite by shoving a metal bar through his ribcage. He just hung there, utterly blasé and indifferent to my wicked ministrations, blandly dangling and swaying. So what was the problem?

My discomfort, I finally realized, stemmed from the fact that there wasn’t anything to The Torture Game. No motivation, no plot, no character, no story, nothing. Other games offer up explanations or justification for your actions: You’re saving the universe, waging war against the forces of evil, or simply scoring points. The Torture Game has no such structure, just tools and the body to use them on. Anything the player experiences, be it revulsion, excitement, or even boredom, relies almost entirely on what he brings to the experience himself.

I had, without realizing it, given the game a subtext that simply wasn’t there. I could have given the figure any number of personalities or backstories that would have better justified rendering him to a bloody pulp – he could’ve been a psycho killer, or a zombie, or a robot dictator from Planet 10 – but instead I immediately cast him in the role of innocent victim and myself as the cruel abuser. I’m not a particularly mean person by nature – I can’t even eat a crunchy chick in Fable without feeling a pang of guilt – so my unconscious decision to respond to helplessness with violence naturally made my skin crawl. As for why that decision was made in the first place, I really can’t say.

Interestingly, the game’s lack of context is part of what concerns Melissa Henson, director of public education for the Parents Television Council. The way she sees it, by not filling in the blanks, the game immediately devolves into something sick and twisted that would likely render the player numb to actual torture. She sees it not as a mindless way to pass the time but as an instruction manual of sorts, a virtual training ground for depravity. For her, the game’s impact is binary: You are either repulsed by it (and therefore OK) or excited by it (and therefore a sicko). Those are certainly two perfectly valid reactions, but they are just as certainly not the only two.

I was horrified by my time with The Torture Game, but comments left both on Newgrounds, where the game is hosted, and at MSNBC, indicate that at least a few folks came away with an entirely different experience. Some found it to be hilarious, others boring. Still others used the flesh and blood of the character as an artistic medium. Some players see it as a diatribe against U.S. interrogation techniques. Bizarrely, a few critics seem to feel the game would be less offensive if the victim screamed and protested more. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.

I’m not going to beat the “it’s just a game” drum, because I consider that to be a big fat cop-out. You can make kicking kittens into a game, too, if you keep score or go for distance, but that doesn’t make you any less of a reprehensible asshat. I am merely going to point out that everything that takes place during a Torture Game session is up to the individual playing. You can hack the poor guy to ribbons or you can simply paint him green; you can cut off his head or just push him around a bit. You’re not rewarded for inflicting pain or punished for being kind – in fact, you’re not prompted to do anything at all. Whatever horrors, fears, or joys you experience while playing the game are ones you had with you before you made your first move.

That’s what makes The Torture Game so fascinating to me. Not the game itself, but rather what it reveals about those who play it. It’s a digital Rorschach test, a not-so-subtle poke at our psyches, turning over the rocks in our heads to see what squiggly things come crawling out into the sunshine. I have no idea what a “normal” or “healthy” response to The Torture Game 2 is, though I suspect several people – mostly politicians – would be happy to tell me.

At the end of the day, what is The Torture Game 2? A tech demo? A torture simulator? A harmless and meaningless plaything? A tool for sparking conversation and thought? Is it a yardstick to measure our empathy, or a mirror to reflect our darker selves? Maybe it’s all of these, maybe it’s none of them. The only one who knows for sure is you.

Susan Arendt knows that for a game to truly be torture, it must include escort missions. Timed escort missions.