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The Tin Man of Far Cry 2: Part 4

These next two pieces have a lot in common. Both are fairly serious criticisms of the ludic and narrative handling of some elements of the game. These pieces call out the game’s allusions to political Realism, the problem of the absence of civilians, and its handling of imperialist and colonialist tropes. These criticisms are tough, given how hard we tried to challenge problematic ideas. But it’s not the purpose of these posts to defend the game, so I’m promoting these pieces in the spirit of embracing well-reasoned criticism - especially criticism that challenges.

#4 - The Politics of Far Cry 2
Jorge Albor’s two part discussion of Far Cry 2’s depiction of politics is framed as ‘not a criticism’. I think this was a common tactic in early games criticism (between about 2006 and 2009). I similarly committed the sin of disclaiming my criticism when I first wrote about Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock. I was wrong when I suggested that piece was not criticism, and I think Albor is wrong here. This piece is absolutely criticism - and ten years later, that’s something I think we can celebrate, and not sweep under the rug.

Among other things, Albor’s piece criticizes the absence of civilians as a missed opportunity to make the player’s decisions more impactful and consequential. This is a common and fair criticism of the game, and I am not sure whether the game would have been better or worse with a robust simulation of civilian presence. I think the argument can be made that the inclusion of civilians might not only create a bunch of thematic noise were the player to needlessly engage in murder, but might also undermine the central framing of the background conflict being depicted as pointless and futile. Other people (including one in an upcoming piece) have discussed this idea at length, so I won’t here, but regardless, Albor’s article remains one of the best and broadest criticisms of the game. Definitely worth a read.

#3 - Unintended Consequences: Malaria and Orientalist Discourse in Far Cry 2(pdf)
The ongoing game writing anthology Well Played, published out of Carnegie Mellon University's ETC Press, consistently brings out some of the very best writing about games, and I was thrilled to discover a piece in Volume 5, Number 1 (page 85), related to Far Cry 2. (Disclaimer: my own piece on Ludonarrative Dissonance was reprinted in the first book in the series).

This excellent piece by Marcus Hensel is much narrower in focus than Albor’s. It examines the game’s depiction of malaria, and its relationship to centuries of imperialist and colonialist discourse related to Africa. This piece was a gut-punch when I read it back in 2016. I think some of the details of his analysis (such as his suggestion that the visual filters used during malaria attacks explicitly reference miasma) are a bit overreaching, but it’s hard not to accept the core of his argument; that elements of the game evoke the Africa of Stanley or Burton.

A key goal for us was to make a game with a deeper physical connection between the land, the objects in the world, and especially the avatar, in order to forge a psychosomatic bond between the player and the avatar that we could then pay off in climactic moments with the buddies. In hindsight, I wish we could have done better at delivering on the aesthetic ambitions of the game without perpetuating some of the very ideas we were trying to challenge. But escaping your cultural biases is difficult - even when you try very hard to examine them.

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The Tin Man of far Cry 2: Part 3

Moving into the middle the pack, the two pieces that occupy fifth and sixth on my list are very different from one another. One, a thoughtful analysis of the game, and the other a meta-analysis of the early reception of the game.

#6 - Opinion: On Far Cry 2's 'Slow Burn’
Chris Remo’s seminal examination of how players seemed to be experiencing the appeared within days of the game’s release. I tried to stay away from pieces that were written in the first months after the launch window, but the way this piece framed people’s thinking about the game can’t be ignored. Pieces about the game written years after the fact (for example, the Alec Meer piece at #7) makes it clear that either Remo’s analysis was right - or that his framing changed the way critics play. Hmmm.

#5 - Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Warfare* But Were Afraid to Ask Far Cry 2
Over the past decade there have probably been thirty pieces that follow a similar structure to this one; walking through the general flow of the game progression and explaining how the various elements of the game and the narrative work together to reinforce the central themes and aesthetics. Leigh Harrison’s piece landed more than six years after the game’s release, and I chose to include it because of all of those pieces over the years, this one is, I think, the most articulate, and most well-written.

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The Tin Man of Far Cry 2: Part 2

The bottom four of my Top 10 represent a pretty diverse set of posts, taken from across a fairly long period of time - including one of the oldest, as well as one of the most recent.

#10 - an essay about the Paradox of Tragedy in Far Cry 2
(Note: if the link doesn't work, paste this into your browser: https://ceasarbautista.com/essays/far_cry.html )
There are several academic, or borderline academic pieces in this list, and this piece by Caesar Bautista, is the first of them. I'm not sure when this piece was written - I think it might have been 2012. The idea that we can 'feel good' about playing a game wherein we do so much terrible stuff is nicely framed in the context of the Paradox of Tragedy, which I had not heard of prior to this article.

#9 - Playlist: Far Cry 2’s Abuses of Body and Story
This piece by Justin Keever from the middle of last year is the most recent piece on my Top 10. I disagree with a lot of Keever's opinions in the piece, which is probably the main reason I chose to include it. There have been many criticisms of Far Cry 2, (and also many criticisms of the idea of ludonarrative dissonance), and for the most part I find the criticism more engaging than the praise.

#8 - War Crimes
This piece by Duncan Fife doesn't actually escape the six month window that surrounded the release of the game, but I felt it worth including because it was one of the first to raise the question of the ethical issues that arise from the absence of civilians in the game world.

#7 - Another Life, Another Time: Far Cry 2 Revisited
Bearing the subtitle "A letter to a younger, angrier me", I always enjoyed the format of this piece. Alec Meer, over at RPS, has a fresh take on a theme that has carried through the Far Cry 2 criticism over the years; that you need to be in a certain mindset in order for the game to 'click' for you - a mindset he wasn't in when he'd played the game 5 years previously, but perhaps was when he wrote the piece.

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The Tin Man of Far Cry 2: Part 1

A few years ago, on the tenth anniversary of the release of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, I posted some thoughts about the development of that game, and the impact it had on my life. Specifically I talked a bit about how the intense stress and long hours on that project affected me. In a follow-up post I clarified some of my own thinking about the complexities of crunch and game development. These challenges are still with us today.

It’s unfortunate that we haven’t figured those problems out yet, but as I said back then - it’s hard and it’s complicated. Oversimplifications of the conversation don’t actually help the people who are living the problem - they are mostly just ideology. What we need to address the problem is discourse, reason and focused effort, not opinions and outrage.

Anyway - I’m not writing today to rehash that debate. I’m writing because another tin anniversary has passed; this, the tenth anniversary of the release of Far Cry 2.

This anniversary has been even harder on me than the last. Far Cry 2 is the last game I shipped; back on October 21, 2008. If you’re a professional game developer reading this, there is a pretty good chance that you have shipped more games than I have in my entire career (3), AND that you have not even been a game developer for the length of time I have gone without shipping.

It probably takes some special kind of self-loathing to frame it in those terms, but this is the kind of twisted shit you can come up with to torture yourself when you’ve got ten years to really make a meal of it. A couple years ago there was a big conversation among game developers about imposter syndrome. I remember thinking at the time “ha ha, fuck all of you fakers! In two years I’ll be writing about how it’s been a decade since I shipped a game! I’m the Original Impostah!”

Well, here we are.

But fortunately, I’m not lost in some dark forest of self-loathing with seized-up joints, unable to move. I wish I could talk about what I’m working on these days, but that will have to wait a while longer. I’m extremely thankful and fortunate to be where I am right now, and I wanted to celebrate this tenth anniversary by sharing some of the things that have kept my heart beating, and have helped me maintain my motivation and focus for a decade, despite so many setbacks and missteps.

For ten years, Far Cry 2 has continued to generate thoughtful responses, meaningful criticism, and increasingly sophisticated analysis. The reviews of the game mostly stopped coming after the first six months. But the critical discourse and the analysis of the game continued, and continues still. In fact, some of the best articles and analyses of the game have been written in the past 18 months. Some people say the game is a ‘cult classic’, some say it was a ‘sleeper hit’, others call it a ‘reference game’. That’s all fine, but what matters to me, and what has kept me going over the years, is the simple fact that ten years later, people are still inspired to play it, to revisit it, and most importantly, to write about it.

So for the tenth anniversary of Far Cry 2, I wanted to share some of the best and most thoughtful criticism of the game that I’ve come across. I went back through old emails, searched the internet, and spent hours organizing my Instapaper account in order to narrow it down to what I feel are the ten best pieces written about Far Cry 2.

In terms of how I filtered them; for the most part I avoided reviews, and tried not to select pieces from the six months that immediately followed the launch of the game (I failed, but I tried). I also tried to avoid pieces that were explicitly comparing Far Cry 2 to other games in the series - there are a lot of those. Part of the reason Far Cry 2 continues to be written about today is, of course, because it stands as a reference for the games that have followed it. But looking back at comparisons - even favorable ones - doesn’t elevate the discourse much, and I wanted to focus on writing about Far Cry 2 outside of the context of other games in the series.

So, over the next few posts, I’ve gathered together my Top 10 articles about Far Cry 2. I could have easily made this a Top 20, and some very great writing didn’t make the cut. That said, within many of the pieces I’ve chosen to share, you’ll find links to other pieces that would have made the Top 20, so they are there if you look for them.

So, thank-you to everyone who has played the game and shared their perspectives and opinions on it over the years. You’ve made a big difference in my life, and without your passion, insight, criticism, and perspective, it’s not clear that I would be where I am today. I owe you all an enormous debt of gratitude, and I look forward to repaying it.

Here we go:
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