In 2005, when my brother Euan was still a schoolboy, we used to play a
lot of Tekken 5 together. If you’re new to this famed video game
series, it’s a one-on-one martial arts simulation - a ferocious yet
endearingly flamboyant experience in which kangaroos trade blows with
Bruce Lee clones, and winged demons grapple with Mexican wrestlers. And
I’m fairly sure Euan is the most savage, unprincipled Tekken 5 player
ever to lay his traitorous fingers upon a PlayStation
2 controller. Some combatants prefer to open a bout with a stunning
punch to the lower body, but Euan was rarely that noble. “Wait a minute,
I want to show you something,” he'd declare, scuttling out of reach.
I'd dutifully wander over to his side of the arena, all patronising
solicitude, and he'd kick me in the face.
Euan is a dirty fighter. But he's also one of the most fearlessly
imaginative people you'll meet. And in its own small way, our shared
gaming hobby is proof of this.
There have been greater feats of
cunning than his Tekken 5 antics, but I like that this gambit ducks
right under the question of manual dexterity. Because on those, purely
functional and “sportsmanlike” terms, my brother has a bit of a mountain
to climb. He has Down's syndrome, a genetic disorder that reportedly
affects one in every thousand babies born in the UK each year, which
often hampers development of fine motor skills. I've never been entirely
sure what Euan thinks of his condition - if you're reading this, Euan, I
apologise in advance for any stupid assumptions. Still, I can’t help
but wonder whether his refusal to fight on terms that leave him at a
disadvantage reflects something larger, a rejection of the role society
wants him to play.
Video games v expectations
We expect “disabled” people – that’s to say, the vast spectrum of
individuals branded as such for convenience’s sake – to be passive,
unaware, content to live within tacit, carefully managed social nooks in
exchange for support and guidance. We don’t expect them to recognise
such overtures for what they are: well-meant, but limiting. We don’t
expect them to break the rules. We don’t expect them to cheat.
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contrast, most video games outright encourage you to misbehave, or at
least refrain from bringing down the gavel when you do: it's what makes
them such wonderful, liberating escapism. Just look at Timesplitters 2,
the work of Nottingham-based developer Free Radical Design. A deranged
cartoon shooter, it tracks how each player conducts him or herself over
the course of match, and offers an appropriate award. As a rule, I’d end
up with something like “hypochondriac” (for picking up medical kits
when you're unhurt) or “backpeddler”. My brother, meanwhile, walked away
from each round with a toxic cocktail of judgments usually including
“most cowardly”, “bully” or “ricochet king”. He's a sneaky player.
Euan and I don’t play Timesplitters 2 anymore, mainly because the
disc has come to resemble a half-digested beermat. Nowadays we're fond
of Gears of War: Judgment for the Xbox
360, a science-fantasy shooter in which granite-jawed marines scuttle
around blasting hideous cave mutants with chainsaw-guns. It's an
opportunity for Euan to flaunt his own, oddly 80s sense of machismo,
equal parts Steven Seagal and The Village People – he's taken to
somersaulting his character in time to a raucous rendition of Everybody
Mambo. There's nothing in the game's world or fiction that accounts for
this behaviour, of course. It's just his personality at play.
No man behind
Another favourite is Left 4 Dead 2
(also on Xbox 360), a brilliant riff on B-movies from Valve Software,
the games industry’s indefatigable pioneer and prankster. Though a world
apart from Timesplitters in most respects – the idea is to carve a path
through hyperactive crowds of Danny Boyle-era zombies, from one
safehouse to the next – Left 4 Dead 2 compares to Free Radical's game in
that in effect it is a personality test. The nature of the threat isn’t
pre-determined but protean, shifting in response to your traits and
tactics.
Cower for too long at the mouth of a street, and Valve’s vaunted
“Director”, a bundle of code with a Stanford complex, might sneak a few
grumpy corpses into the road behind you, a none-too-subtle hint that
you’re letting an unseen audience down. Split from the group in a fit of
zeal and you’re asking to be pinioned by an elite nasty like the Hunter
(imagine one of David Cameron’s huggable hoodies, cross-bred with a
panther). Euan gets along famously with Hunters. He’s also
well-acquainted with the Witch, a sinister, weeping apparition who won’t
bother you, providing you don’t bother her. Suffice to say that we
seldom leave a Witch to her own devices, and I'm usually the one who
winds up a broken ruin in the process.
Left 4 Dead by Valve – a game about surviving the zombie holocaust, preferably without your brother goading the undead
And yet - my brother has never once abandoned me to my fate. His
delight at leaving me in the lurch is exceeded only by the satisfaction
he seems to feel at being my rescuer: it's another way, I guess, of
refusing to be the kind of individual he's expected to be.
Each of Left 4 Dead’s chapters or “campaigns” concludes with an
all-or-nothing gauntlet run or final stand in the face of overwhelming
odds. You might have to defend a rock stadium while waiting for a rescue
chopper, using concert pyrotechnics to set the undead on fire, or
refuel a car in the middle of an infested shopping mall. We're rubbish
at these sections, but that's OK - dying in Left 4 Dead is often much
more fun than surviving. The point isn’t so much to succeed as to share
the experience of a protracted and hilarious failure, as best-laid plans
fall to the Director’s tricks and only-human feats of incompetence or
treachery.
Clegg v sense
Games like Left 4 Dead can be every bit as exhilarating and convivial
as a real-life sport. It's frustrating that so many people continue to
regard them as degrading and desensitising. Parents should “ration” a
child's consumption of “corrosive” videogames, father of three Nick
Clegg observed on LBC in September,
adding that players “occupy a sort of hermetically sealed world really
of their own, and that can have a very detrimental effect”. The idea of
joining in, much as you'd join your kids for a game of football, doesn't
seem to occur to Clegg – but how are we to lure people out of that
“world”, assuming this is necessary, if not by comprehending what makes
it so enticing? And what possibilities are we dismissing in the process?
Quantum of Solace – this mediocre James Bond tie-in may have hidden benefits.
My brother has been playing video games for well over a decade. If
this has had “a very detrimental effect” on him, he hides it very well,
though I suppose there is that slightly unnerving fixation with James
Bond. This has been the cause of some strife: I'll travel home for the
weekend armed with a critical darling like Bioshock Infinite - think
Martin Scorcese's Gangs of New York meets David Mitchell's novel Cloud
Atlas - only to discover him tucking into his battered old copy of
Quantum of Solace, a middling adaptation of the Daniel Craig film. I've
hidden the disc on occasion. Not proud.
The value of Bond
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My
brother’s dedication to Quantum of Solace may actually have been
constructive, much as I hate to admit it. Years ago, he'd ask me to help
out with the game's number puzzles (hacking into an electronic door
lock, for example) and Quick Time Events - “on rails” sequences that are
shot and edited like the action bits in any garden-variety blockbuster
movie, where you tap buttons on cue to make it through unscathed.
Nowadays, Euan is able to perform these without assistance. Is this
evidence that his time in 007's shoes has honed his reflexes and
improved his numeracy? Possibly. There's growing support for the idea that far from damaging youngsters, games can actually aid cognitive development and have educational benefits.
Equipped with tools, objectives and obstacles, a game is analogous to
a classroom, a crucible in which to test out and master all sorts of
principles. That the principles transferred (eg where best to punch a
kangaroo) may not be worth the trouble is no argument against the
medium’s efficacy. Among the organisations that acknowledge this is the
National Security Agency: in documents
published by the Guardian in November, our friendly neighbourhood G-men
note that both the US army and Lebanese Hezbollah have developed games
for training and recruitment. I like to think that the NSA has a file on
Euan. He could certainly teach them a thing or two about underhand
tactics.
Visual learning
It's possible that children with Down's syndrome have more to gain
from “edu-tainment” software than they do traditional teaching methods,
as I learned during a conversation with Gillian Taylor, an occupational
therapist at UK gamer's charity Special Effect.
“People with Down's syndrome are very visual learners,” she tells me.
“So they learn much better from visual materials than auditory materials
or other learning styles. If you think about how much computer games
give you visually, I think that could be a real benefit.” This may be
especially true of touchscreen games, which allow players to meddle with
an image without first mastering a control device.
I'm not trying to claim that every child born with the condition
belongs in a virtual reality booth. In Gillian's view, “people with
Down's syndrome are as different as people generally, in terms of the
spectrum of skills that they have” - some will go to college, like Euan,
others may not, and blanket solutions are of use to nobody. But where a
real classroom may seem threatening to a person who isn’t as literate
or socially adept as his or her peers, games at least offer a controlled
environment in which to hang out and experiment with concepts.
Learning something isn't necessarily the point - success of any kind
is good for you, whether you experience it in the real world or not.
“Motivation can be a problem for people with Down's syndrome,” Gillian
observed. “If they're not getting any success with things, they're not
going to develop the self-esteem, and they're not going to want to try,
and therefore the skills aren't going to build. The right game can offer
the right challenge, enabling them to enjoy success, which in turn
motivates them to progress further.”
Freedom and control
The right game can be hard to find, unfortunately, which is why
Special Effect puts on roadshows throughout the UK, where players of all
abilities can try out the charity's colossal library of tailor-made
control devices, many of them based on commercially available hardware,
like Sony's DualShock pad. Examples include a peripheral that allows you
to drag and drop virtual chess pieces with your eyes, and an intricate
device that makes it possible to play a 3D shooter using chin movements,
voice commands and a switch mounted on the side of a chair.
“Our role there is as facilitators to help them experience a range of
games with different speeds, cognitive levels and control
complexities,” says communications chief Mark Saville. “The magic
happens when they experience games that match their abilities.” These
events are also on opportunity for friends and loved ones to experience
these titles; in helping those with disabilities get to grips with a
game, Special Effect is helping to lower the entry threshold across the
board.
Perhaps the leakiest preconception about video games right now is
that they can't be shared - that gaming is an adolescent cult practise,
inaccessible to any except card-carrying enthusiasts. But a world is
only “hermetically sealed” if you insist on being outside it - and
ultimately, the loss is yours. Playing games with my brother has made me
more conscious of his spontaneity, his guile and resourcefulness, his
intellectual independence and irreverence. It’s one of many ways he
reveals himself not as a “disabled” person but simply as his own person,
as hell-bent on deciding his own destiny as anybody else.
