Photo Modes Change How We Play Games
By: Jessica Alouette
Tags: Gaming, Videogames

In order to get this picture, I found a group of Uruk by a fire, snuck up, used an ability I had which would make a fire explode when shot, and turn myself around because cool guys don’t look at explosions. The timing had to be just so that I was part-way out of the wraith form, while the aftermath of my actions ensued behind me. A lot of consideration went into this shot and the art of making it just so, but it was a consideration of how to make violence look cool. I felt weird after realizing that I had done this completely without any critical examination of what I was doing or why. I was just after that one killer shot.

The power of photo modes to unconsciously shift play in such a way that a player seeks out the spectacular and creates chains of violent events specifically for their photos stands out as something powerful. So, ask yourself this: How many skeletons lie in your screenshots folder? How often have you done this same thing without thinking? Could you do better in the future?

I want to be very clear, by the way, and weed out any commenters who stopped watching after I talked about violence: this isn’t a condemnation of violence in video games. Rather, this is a side effect of the decision to place the focus of any given game on violence.

When we place the focus of a game on violence, then the natural evolution of someone using a photo mode, or even simply screenshotting that game, is very likely to be producing images caked in violence. When we talk about video game screenshots more broadly, it is not uncommon to see a dead body lying somewhere in frame; a sight which would be horrific to an observer detached from the world of what video games are. This isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to games where we can pause and precisely control capture, but to any sort of casual capture as well.

Chris Plante, writing for The Verge, found himself confronting this as he worked through his game screenshots:

One recurring theme, was … a bit jarring. My gallery is stuffed with photos of virtual dead bodies, like rigid tuna packed into a can. … The oldest shot in the gallery is a cop unloading a round into the head of GTA 4’s protagonist Nico Bellic; the newest, a low poly soldier taking a bullet to the chest.

Link to the original article.

When it comes to photo modes, we as players can actually think about how we make violence look cool in much the same way as a game developer would.

At some point in development, decisions need to be made about how to make violence look and feel cool to the audience of the developer: the players. As a photographer operating within the constraints of that same game, we too may be thinking about how we present violence to our audience, whether that’s simply ourselves, or the general public.

When we talk about photography in general, the entire art is something of a value judgement: what do we feel is worth preserving and sharing?

When you look at Instagram or Facebook, for example, you most likely see preservations of the mundane: people’s pets, the food they eat, everyday occurrences. These things are meaningful to the photographer in some way, even though they may be otherwise mundane, and so they’re worth preserving.

In contrast, seeing my gallery from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, it’s clear that what I took away from it was not the beauty that could be found within Mordor — limited as it was — but rather the brutality which shaped the core of it. My screenshots fixate on that brutality, with rare breaks to show environments or characters I found interesting. As the player, violence was what was most meaningful and worth preserving from that game, which speaks volumes about other aspects of the game.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (developed by Ubisoft; original release 2018)

In other games, different takeaways make themselves apparent. My shots from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey reflect scale and scope; grand digital landscapes, historical landmarks, and amazing views. Those from Forza Horizon 3 reflect the spectacle of the Horizon Festival, exciting moments of wheel-to-wheel action, and the design of some pretty incredible machinery.

Everyone’s takeaway from an individual game will be different, of course. But perhaps, when you next take a screenshot or use a photo mode, ask yourself: What do I feel is really worth preserving here?

Special thanks to TheQueerestDeer and apogeesys for their assistance with editing this script.