Conversations with the Censor - the Amendment to the Communications Act

As you might have heard, new regulations limiting the sale of pornography went into effect at the start of this month. These laws apply the restrictions imposed on material granted an R18 certificate (the label that only sanctions sale in licensed adult shops) to online website-based sales, preventing UK-based producers from vending them. I think that this is a sufficiently bad thing to be worth writing about.

I've explained my objections to the recent anti-porn laws before,but it is likely worth repeating them here. As a Christian, it is impossible for me not to have some moral reservations about the practices of the porn industry – if only because the sex life it typically requires differs so strongly from the Christian model. This doesn't in itself mean that I would support a legal ban on pornography – confiscating free will from adults with regard to their own bodies isn't always a good thing. In fact I'd regard a blanket ban on porn as stupid and destructive in exactly the same ways that the 1930s American ban on alcohol was stupid and destructive. Even so, such a move would carry some moral arguments in its favour that I could respect.

The recent legal changes against pornography have not, however, been intended to create a blanket ban. Nor have they been intended to suppress 'hardcore' porn whilst allowing 'softer' productions to flourish. Instead, the law has criminalised porn that features certain specified sex acts, leaving porn that features different ones unaffected.

There is a truly vast amount of pornography in the world and most people don't view it entirely at random. Different porn caters for all kinds of different sexual interests, meaning that the specific porn a person chooses to seek out is a reflection of their own sexuality. Banning porn of specific acts therefore marks the target audience as undesirables, who are prevented from exploring themselves in the same way as everyone else in the alleged interest of the public good.

Although this is certainly understandable in the case of paedophilia, the vast majority of the restrictions imposed by the legislation regarding 'Extreme Pornography' and by the R18 guidelines impact squarely upon the BDSM community. Since this minority is already widely misunderstood and mistrusted, such attitudes from the top are harmful by default. The implications of selectively erasing the evidence of a particular sexual identity from the pornographic record are also fairly ugly. Even worse, the Extreme Pornography legislation has spent a great deal of time actually harming the harmless with prosecutions since it was enacted, whilst doing little to nothing in terms of protecting the public.

I was therefore rather concerned when I read last summer that Mr Cameron intended to bring in new restrictions for online porn based on the R18 rules. If the new law created new crimes for viewers, it could lead to a rise in these kind of prosecutions. I took a look at the BBFC's website to see what the new restrictions would entail. The list currently available runs as follows:

Material which is in breach of the criminal law,

including material judged to be obscene under the

current interpretation of the Obscene Publications Act

1959 (see Annexe)

Material (including dialogue) likely to encourage

an interest in sexually abusive activity which may

include adults role-playing as non-adults

The portrayal of sexual activity which involves real

or apparent lack of consent. Any form of physical

restraint which prevents participants from indicating a

withdrawal of consent

The infliction of pain or acts which may cause lasting

physical harm, whether real or (in a sexual context)

simulated. Some allowance may be made for

moderate, non-abusive, consensual activity

Penetration by any object associated with violence or

likely to cause physical harm

Sexual threats, humiliation or abuse which do not

form part of a clearly consenting role-playing game.

Strong physical or verbal abuse, even if consensual, is

unlikely to be acceptable

You can probably see how a lot of this relates very much to fetish material, which is problematic in itself. Although the list provided some kind of guidelines, I also felt that they were too vague if consumers were to be expected to apply them. I therefore emailed the BBFC enquiring about clarifications. Some were provided in response to my specific questions:

“use of ball gags and hoods is allowed, and may be allowed if hands are also restrained, however, full restraint and use of a gag, which prevents an individual from indicating a withdrawal of consent, is not acceptable. Careful penetration with a whip used in consensual BDSM play, for example, may be allowed, although there may also be circumstances in which it would be a problem.”

“The BBFC does not allow breath restriction or acts which restrict oxygen in sex works. We will also cut sight of penetration with objects likely to cause physical harm or associated with violence, such as knives and guns, and objects which are breakable or which have a higher likelihood of being lost internally and requiring medical intervention. So far as physical harm or the infliction of pain goes, there is, as you've noted, an allowance for moderate, non-abusive, consensual activity. However, and also in line with the Crown Prosecution Service guidance on the Obscene Publications Act, we will not allow the infliction of injury which goes beyond trifling and transient. You will understand that it would be impossible to provide an exhaustive list covering what is and is not allowed, given the wide range of possible practices. Certain acts we would also need to consider on their own merits in the context of a submitted work, taking into account such considerations as any evident care being taken.”


This is all very well, but ultimately much of it comes down to the judgement of the censor in regard to a specific work. But surely the BBFC can't study and rate every video with a .uk address on the internet? The examiner I communicated with was understandably reluctant to speculate on the mechanics of future legislation, but when pressed on the existence of any more detailed guidelines his response was clear:


“In terms of examiners' consideration of submitted works, we do have internal guidance which is based on research, medical and psychological advice, precedent, and our years of experience. But this is internal working guidance and is not publicly available. We do offer distributors and producers detailed guidance on what is and isn't likely to be allowed where specific questions are asked of us. But it is more difficult to respond in general terms because of the wide range of variables which can be relevant to the classification decision.”


So if you are making porn for DVD release in the UK, you are required to abide by a censorship guide that you are not allowed to actually read in full. This is an actual true fact. And now it applies if you run a website too.

1950s icon Bettie Page is spanked whilst gagged and in full bondage in a film by Irving Klaw. Although selling hardcore footage of orgies is entirely legal in the UK, the legal ability of a British Klaw working today to sell this film would be questionable.





Of course, the new legislation didn't in fact create new offences for consumers as I had feared it would. You can still watch porn that was legal last month, it simply can't be supplied to you online by UK-based pornographers. Since there are plenty of other countries in the world, the only actual effect of this new Amendment will be to damage the UK's porn industry in the truly international marketplace of the internet.
A notable number of people would probably celebrate news of a decline in domestic porn production, but it sure is an odd way to legislate when your grand plan is to stimulate private sector growth whilst shrinking welfare. In fact, the Tories recently emailed me to inform me that “the Conservatives are backing small businesses every way we can” - a statement that probably wouldn't go down well with the individuals and tiny companies under threat following the Amendment..At the very least they will be required to register their existence with AVOD and receive advice about how to run their show – for which they will be charged at least £137. This is because AVOD actually IS going to try and survey all British-created online porn – and charge the creators for doing it. Good thing the Tories are going for “lower taxes, better infrastructure, less red tape”.


The law only makes any kind of sense as a social policy – an assertion that the current R18 rating system is so fit for purpose that it should be applied more consistently instead of subjected to any kind of reform. So what does the system actually do?


Much of the press has been circulating a list of erotic acts that have been banned outright in UK porn. The list typically runs as follows (this example taken from the Independent):

Spanking
Caning
Aggresive Whipping
Penetration by any object 'associated with violence'
Physical or Verbal Abuse (regardless of if consensual)
Urolagnia (known as 'water sports')
Role-playing as Non-adults
Physical Restraint
Humiliation
Female Ejaculation
Strangulation
Facesitting
Fisting

The last three are described as 'life-threatening', due to the theoretical risk of smothering in facesitting and the danger of internal lacerations if fisting is performed under tragically ill-judged circumstances (such as wearing a large uneven ring in one known case). 

Facesitting can be lethal if you base your technique on Soul Calibur IV.

 
These kind of outright restrictions seem at odds with the contextual approach the BBFC has previously described and I can tell you that they are definitely over-simplistic. The best summary of the actual legal position that I've seen can be found here: These restrictions are not necessarily any less random or arbitrary, but they are at least more nuanced.


In fact, both the BBFC and AVOD have condemned the reporting on the issue as inaccurate. A similarly clear and comprehensive summation of their own has not been forthcoming from either of them. In response to further enquiries from myself, the BBFC replied:

“The amendment gives effect to the Governments commitment to align online regulation more closely with offline regulation. It created two types of content on UK-regulated VOD services: First, specially restricted content, which is content the BBFC has rated or would rate R18 and must be placed behind access controls on UK-regulated VOD services ; and secondly , prohibited content which is content the BBFC has refused or would refuse to classify. This content is banned from UK-regulated VOD services.
Media reports of a BBFC list of banned sexual activity for content on VOD services are misleading. There is no such list. Nor could there be given the importance of context in BBFC classification decisions.”

Of course, a body of proven 'prohibited content' does exist – and one assumes that the Independent in some fashion drew its own list from this evidence. The alleged restriction that has provoked the most outrage is the limitation on female ejaculation. It is not immediately obvious why this would be subject to such measures, given that male ejaculation is unrestricted. So is this a case of false reporting?


I dug up an old response by the BBFC to a question by Feminists Against Censorship which explains that:
“The Board does not in fact take any view on whether or not female ejaculation exists... At the most basic level, however, the Board is content that the pornographic tapes presented to us as examples of 'female ejaculation' are in fact nothing other than straightforward scenes of urination masquerading as 'female ejaculation'...
To conclude, the Board remains open minded about the issue of female ejaculation but we have yet to be presented with any pornographic video that has convinced us – or our medical advisor – that it consists of anything other than an excuse to display scenes of urolagnia. Such scenes are regularly found obscene by juries in the UK and therefore cannot be classified.”

My own communications with the BBFC confirm that this position remains in force:

“With regards to specific media speculation about banning female ejaculation, the BBFC is required to seek to avoid classifying material that is likely to be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. According to the CPS's guidelines, sex works featuring urolagnia are likely to be prosecuted. Therefore, unless it's very clear that what is being shown is indeed 'female ejaculation', as opposed to urolagnia, the Board's position has to be that scenes of this nature featuring liquid that might be urine have to be cut.”

They further linked me to their FAQs section, which includes the following:

“Consequently, we may not classify any material which may be subject to prosecution. Among other activities, this includes any repeated focus on urination during sex and urination over any other person, including any act which cannot be distinguished from urination on the basis of the onscreen evidence alone.”

This level of confusion is not surprising. The existence of female ejaculation – and whether any liquid expelled is actually urine – honestly is subject to a great deal of uncertainty within the scientific community. Given the thorough scientific understanding and pornographic acceptance of male emissions, it's unsurprising that some see female ejaculation as a bona fide feminist issue. I'm... unsure how the ban on depictions of sexual urination in any fashion (or of any kind of breathing restriction) is compatible with the statement that there is not and could not be any list of banned acts.


If female ejaculation is a problematic subject due to the relationship with urolagnia, the obvious follow-up question is 'why is peeing a concern of the CPS?” As you can see, the answer lies in the current status of obscenity laws. One of the foremost duties of the BBFC and AVOD is to ensure that illegal material is not certified for distribution. Aside from the Extreme Pornography legislation, the key piece of law is the Obscene Publications Act 1959.
The act in question prohibits the publication of material which is deemed 'obscene' on the grounds that it “is, if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.” Material can be exempted from these measures if it is published in the interest of “science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern”. In fact, a dominatrix recently fought off AVOD by successfully claiming that her website The Urban Chick Supremacy Cell was a piece of feminist art. On the other hand, there is little sign that much evidence is needed to convict beyond the personal estimation of the jurors – making cases into a survey of popular mores with a remarkably small sample size.


Obviously attitudes have changed since the early days of the Act, when a jury was asked whether Lady Chatterley's Lover was the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read." The CPS guidelines on obscenity have consequently evolved with them. Although many both inside and outside of the Church might argue that all hardcore pornography threatens to corrupt and deprave its users, porn has become far too normalised for prosecutions to be attempted on this basis alone. The only porn likely to be acted against is that which features acts so unusual that the average person might experience a negative visceral reaction upon seeing them for the first time. In other words, the Act now exclusively suppresses minority interests that Joe Average finds icky.
Awareness and acceptance of sexual minorities has increased significantly in recent decades, but acceptance of the BDSM community is lagging behind many others. Some claim that this must ever be so, because celebrating acts similar to those used to violate the unwilling when they are performed in a mutually appreciative environment is incompatible with civilised society. Obviously, applying the exact same argument to regular sex would lead to the conclusion that the crime of rape makes celebrating consensual sex unacceptable – which would immediately be dismissed as nonsense. This double standard persists due to the alarmingly common notion that hardcore BDSM enthusiasts are malicious predators, who use things like negotiation and consent as reluctant compromises and cynical shields. Although such exceptions do attempt to move among them, defining the whole group in that way is wildly unfair. Many of the restrictions on the porn that people are allowed to be 'influenced by' are most consistent with this hostile mode of thought – and that matters.
Even so, the willingness of juries to convict on obscenity charges is pretty low even in BDSM cases. In 2012, the case of R v Peacock returned a not guilty verdict regarding videos featuring various BDSM activities including fisting and urolagnia. Following the trial, several legal experts stated that the Obscene Publications Act no longer made any sense. Two years later, CPS guidelines still cite both fisting and urolagnia as obscene (forcing censors to classify them as prohibited) and the only legal change has been to apply the unaltered Act to more material.


The BBFC is perfectly willing to admit that it will censor beyond the strict requirements of the law to avoid negative social influences. In a public statement they explain that:


“Underpinning the BBFC guidelines is a specific requirement for the Video Recordings Act to have special regard to any harm that may be caused to potential viewers, or, through their behaviour, to society. This means that, before classifying a work, the BBFC may cut certain acts in pornographic works where imitation or the influencing of attitudes is a particular concern. Breath restriction is one such example. It would be wrong to assume that the BBFC consequently cuts all sight of people sitting across other people’s faces. But the BBFC will cut sight of clear and deliberate restriction of a person’s ability to breathe during sexual play. Breath restriction for the purposes of sexual enjoyment can result in death. Given such a clear and well-documented risk of harm, passing such breath play in a sex work would be contrary to the BBFC’s designated responsibility.”


Concern about foolish and dangerously performed imitation of riskier play is a valid thing – people really do hurt themselves and others that way. But attempting to erase all examples (including all the properly performed ones) in the hope that the idea will go away seems profoundly naïve. Of course, such footage would probably be illegal anyway so the choice of argument is surprising.




Practically speaking this new law will have very little actual impact – being limited entirely to damaging a small part of a domestic industry via new regulations that other, less international parts are already dealing with. Ideologically, however, expanding the enforcement of these laws without amending them is a slap in the face for all the activists who have been campaigning for years to raise awareness of the problematic features of both old and new legislation. It is also of necessity a positive endorsement of internet censorship.
Some writers have described porn freedoms as the 'canary in the coal-mine' of civil liberties – the first to die when conditions become toxic. When discussing a government that has made scrapping the Human Rights Act into a re-election pledge, this kind of doom-saying isn't entirely unreasonable. Apparently AVOD is already proposing that banks be obliged to decline payments to foreign pay-sites that don't meet its standards. This is a logical progression of the current measures, but one that has far wider implications for public freedom.




Backlash has launched a challenge of the new law, as can be seen here. For whatever it's worth, a direct.gov petition is also collecting signatures.
Other protests against the Amendment have been less... conventional. To the very best of my knowledge, no one died.

Gaming - I don't need GamerGate because...

This thing called GamerGate is starting to turn from a flash in the pan to a sustained conflagration. I didn't pay much attention to it at the start and have been waiting for it to go away, but that just isn't happening. Since the debate about social issues around gaming and geek culture is something that I keep coming back to on this blog, I guess we've reached the point where it makes sense for me to make some sort of comment on the existence of this controversial movement.

The exact nature of the GamerGate movement is something that is being furiously debated on many corners of the internet. To some writers, it is a grass roots movement to overturn a long-term culture of dishonesty and unaccountability amongst game journalists. To others, it is a brutal male campaign to drive female writers out of the games journalism industry. Despite the vast volume of material, it didn't take me long to figure out the basic truth.

GamerGate is a hashtag.

To align their actions with the GamerGate movement, all a person has to do is to attach the statement that they support GamerGate to them. In the same way that not everything credited to Anonymous is the work of people who collaborate with each other, not everything done in the name of GamerGate is the work of a united band of people. Since applying the symbolic title to yourself doesn't require a third party's approval, different people who support GamerGate have entirely different ideas about what it is they are supporting. GamerGate stands for 'fighting against corruption in the gaming press', but the definition of corruption is somewhat varied. To some people, it means bribery and undisclosed conflicts of interests. To others, it means the growing (though actually still very small) presence of feminist and social justice related discourse in the gaming press. To a slightly confusing third group, it means both.

There is strong evidence that some women who have spoken out against GamerGate have been driven from their homes by detailed threats to rape and kill their entire families. This is a more important issue than anything else surrounding GamerGate and deserves to be focused on to the exclusion of the original point. If a politician is kidnapped by terrorists who intend to behead him, it simply isn't the time to continue publicly debating whether he should be fired for cheating on his expenses. Yet the debate still rumbles on about whether these kind of outrages are any kind of reflection of the main GamerGate movement and what it should mean for the future. Is GamerGate an attack on women that is being shielded by crowds who accept its cover story, or is the criminal element a rogue offshoot emboldened by what it falsely believes is a wave of popular support? If a symbol is disgraced by some of its bearers, should it be discarded to isolate them or reclaimed by public displays of the true meaning?

The second question is actually really interesting on a philosophical level and I'm sure that powerful arguments can be made in both directions. However, the answer in a given case will typically be related to the original purpose of the movement and the likely results of its future actions. It's one thing to claim that the church should continue to exist in spite of the inquisition and the crusades. It's another thing to claim that the Ku Klux Klan should continue to exist now that it (probably) doesn't murder people any more.

Although some of the articles supporting GamerGate have done more to drive me toward hostility than anything else has, I haven't yet bothered to dig down to the roots of the the first moments of this event and try to figure out what was going on in the heads of those involved. What I have seen, however, is that many people now genuinely believe that the main body of GamerGate is a force for good. Although I suppose any incidence of dishonest behaviour is worth a little head shaking and tut tutting, the only logical conclusion I can come to is that many people believe that 'corruption in game journalism' is a threatening source of harm for gamers.

To me, that's a bit weird.

The main reason that I stayed ignorant of GamerGate for so long is that the bits and pieces I encountered whilst reading other things didn't actually interest me very much. I was vaguely aware that some sort of activism was going on in response to possible revelations of hidden agendas among game journalists, but that never sounded like something I needed to care about. Despite the fact that I consume a large amount of game journalism and buy games whenever I have the money, I didn't feel like such an issue was actually a threat to me.

On reflection, this may be due to the specific nature of myself as an individual. As a trained historian, I've read a remarkable number of documents with undisclosed biases. Taking a critical eye to what I read and sifting out the agendas of the writer is just something that I naturally do all of the time. If gamers are genuinely afraid that corruption is going to result in them being taken for a ride, it suggests that they don't know how to read the articles they are consuming properly in the first place. If you truly are worried about being suckered by dishonest games journalism, allow me to explain how you stop that from happening to you.

One of the most basic skills that all history students need to learn is the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion. Obtaining factual knowledge of the past is a key part of the discipline and documents from the period in question provide a wealth of information. However, such records are nearly always filled with the opinions and interpretations of the person who felt motivated to write them in the first place. It is vital to be able to weed those out and examine the facts yourself independently, potentially coming to very different conclusions.

A fact is a concrete, objective truth. An opinion is a conclusion or a value judgement, which is usually presented as a logical progression from the facts stated. In gaming journalism, opinions are things like '10/10', 'game of the year', 'this game sucks' and 'sexist and objectifying'. Facts are things like 'over 200 quests with multiple possible outcomes', 'I encountered 5 game-crashing glitches in the first hour of play' and 'there are only two female characters in the whole game and both of them are strippers'.

The trick, therefore, is to divide the accounts of a game's actual features and content from the level of enthusiasm that a particular critic is displaying for the game. If a writer declares something to be 'the best game of the year' and goes on to describe a game-play experience that you would find completely uninteresting, the thing that you should take away from this is that you have no interest in the game. I can entirely accept that not everyone is going to enjoy Gone Home as much as I did, but I'm bewildered by the number of user reviews that savage it for being a 'walking simulator'. The reason I'm bewildered is that the game's publicity was fairly open about there being no combat or puzzles, which suggested to me that I was going to be walking to the exclusion of shooting and jumping.

No games journalist is going to deliberately present untrue facts about a game that has been released. There is simply no possibility of getting away with it. However much it might help the game's profile, Ubisoft would be unable to bribe anyone to announce that 'actually you CAN play a female character in Assassin's Creed Unity'. Such a claim would be thoroughly disproved for free by others almost as soon as it was made and the journalist would potentially lose their entire career.

Of course, lies can be told about games that are still forthcoming – purely because the developers themselves are the only source of information on the subject. In this case, journalists might well end up repeating those lies to you because they have no means of detecting them either. If you think that such advance coverage is the result of the developers actively soliciting it, you'd be absolutely right. In the real world, people don't create a product and then wait for the press to beat down their door. Promoting your product is how you sell it and much of what journalists report has been actively brought to their attention. If you want developers to stand or fall on their products rather than their skill at generating publicity, the best thing you can do is not pay top prices to pre-own products that don't exist yet.

If you want to avoid falling prey to deliberate propaganda for a particular game, look out for articles which consist almost exclusively of opinions. A piece that tells you a title 'is set to blow gamers away', 'redefines the genre' and 'is the must-buy game of the year' without actually saying anything detailed about the features and content is not worth your time. Such writing doesn't have to mean that the author has been bought – but if you can separate the facts from the opinions, it doesn't really matter why the writer is being so enthusiastic. You'll reserve judgement and form your own opinion when you have more information.

Of course, not all authors are balanced about the facts they include. Many emphasise facts that support their conclusions and neglect facts that don't. This means that if you are going to base your purchases on the reviews you read, it is best to read several reviews (both positive and negative) before you come to a conclusion.

You'll notice that the value judgement of whether a game is 'good' or not is an opinion. This means that the final score a reviewer assigns to a game is always just an opinion. Viewing these scores as objective consumer information therefore slightly misunderstands what they mean. For reasons that Moviebob explains here, the very notion that critics exist simply to provide consumer advice is not true. Critics are perfectly entitled to examine the value of a piece to themselves in terms of their own broader perspectives and tastes.

Don't ask a critic 'will I like this game?' They aren't psychic and they've never met you. Ask them 'did you like this game?', 'do you think that the creative elements have value?' and 'what does it do?' Be aware that a game's score is based on answers to these questions. A critic who sells their opinion on the first two points is being dishonest with you, but it's still up to you how much you embrace their views as your own.

For some gamers, the habit of regarding their own tastes as an objective measure of value is quite acute. Many gamers seem to feel that developers are duty-bound to produce games that cater to what gamers (already know that they) want – and it is certainly a useful business strategy. Unfortunately, some define the term 'gamer' as 'a gamer like me', regarding significantly different recreational consumers of games as intruders rather than as a part of the community.

Gamers of this type tend to see critics as existing purely to provide them with consumer advice. More specifically, they expect the review score to be an objective assessment of how closely it panders to their own tastes. They expect this regardless of what the reviewer's own tastes are, since the critic exists to serve gamers and the only true gamers are like themselves. Reviewing games according to differing sets of values provides a varied range of differently reasoned review scores and validates diversity within the gaming community. A vocal minority of gamers get violently upset every single time this happens, questioning the integrity of the dissenting critics and their right to exist within the game journalism sphere.

Whatever your stance on GamerGate, don't be one of those guys.

Otherwise, just read critically and you'll be fine. Sometimes journalists will publicise the existence of a game without telling you exactly how much they like the creator. Sometimes they'll express a wish for a game to succeed without fully explaining the reasons behind their desires – or will explain them in terms of what the game's reception means for wider socio-political issues. Neither of these things will result in you being conned out of money, as long as you take the time to detach yourself enough to form your own conclusions instead of just absorbing theirs.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

Review - Gone Home (Spoiler free)

I'm a role-player at heart. When I play a game that casts me as a character – even one that doesn't meet my definitions of a role-playing game – I tend to enjoy it most when I get into the head of that character. This is really just an extension of the basic need to suspend disbelief, of course, but asking me to dictate the character's actions places me in a role-player mindset.

First and foremost, my enjoyment as a role-player comes from experiencing the world around me. I can enjoy the competitive skill-based element of an RPG, but the victory means far less if I don't care about the stakes. I definitely enjoy crafting and exploring an interesting personality, but there are few RP experiences more frustrating than guiding a well-crafted and interesting persona through a dull story and/or nonsensical world. By contrast, I can happily use my character as little more than an avatar through which to visit an entirely new world and explore every detail of an environment where anything could be possible.

Video games are equipped to bring that world to life in a way that no other form of RPG does. To actually see and hear the world in question and experience the pivotal events in real time is as awesome as a really good film adaptation of a novel. To have the entire world prepared for you in advance and no need to share the limelight with others is a luxury few other RPGs will afford you.

The downside, of course, is the fundamentally limited nature of a pre-built world. There's no fun in exploring if you won't find anything off the beaten path (except maybe a new type of random monster encounter). Bethesda games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 are among my favourite games ever because you can find actual people and stories in areas that the main plot does not dictate you must go. Yet even these can only afford to furnish an empty building with two or three interesting props, telling a story effectively but briefly.

Gone Home is a game that is dedicated to pushing the world-exploration feature of gaming to its limits in the most intimate detail possible. The concept is simple – amidst a powerful storm in 1995, you arrive home after a year abroad to find the family home unexpectedly deserted. There is a note on the door implying that there is a serious reason for this unplanned state of affairs, but no full explanation. The entire game thereafter consists of exploring the domestic Marie Celeste left behind by your loved ones in an attempt to piece together what has happened to them. In the course of this, you can pick up basically any object in the environment – and there are hundreds if not thousands of them waiting to be discovered. 

The sheer minimalism of this game has left some questioning whether it is actually a game at all. If they'd built this thing in the real world (which would almost have been possible) it would be labelled an 'experience' or an 'art installation'. There is no competitive element and little that requires skill. What there is is an finely crafted narrative experience that is definitely worth having – providing you have the right mind for it.

Gone Home is a game that will move you and make you care – if you let it. Gone Home is a game that will creep you out if not outright scare you – if you let it. But with so few actual pieces of overt theatricality built into the game, getting your head into it is a task you must fulfil for yourself. Being sufficiently immersed to care what has happened to all your character's loved ones and afraid of what might be down the next unlit corridor is something you have to manage without a cinematic cutscene or a weapon to point at the darkness. This isn't a game you play casually, power through or do whilst multi-tasking – it's a game you stick your head in for as long as you can, then quit until the desire to know the answers drives you back to it.

That's not to say the developers haven't done their work to engage you. This game has been thought out meticulously to the last detail. The house is a large old mansion, with a serious number of rooms and the potential for hidden secrets. However, your family only moved there after you left – leaving you unfamiliar with the environment and limiting the amount of stuff that has yet been unpacked to a workable (if very large) quantity. The targeting prompt has also been designed to bridge the gap between the character's knowledge and your own – with targeting familiar items resulting in prompts like 'It's Mum's old work mug' and 'It's that book Dad wrote'. The prompt also changes in reaction to some items – which helps to characterise you given that almost all of your own stuff is still boxed away.

As a mystery game, Gone Home obviously has less replay value than a lot of titles. I therefore recommend that you force yourself to take the play-through slow. The house is brilliantly designed to make your imagination run wild and learning the truth will close off the uncertainty with a gratification that is best delayed. I got two days out of the game by being methodical and taking notes on everything I found – but it's easily possible to complete in one or two hours if you are more focused on the stand-out items. The open-world approach actually makes it possible to complete rather prematurely if you find keys in the 'wrong' order – my advice would be to explore the basement and beyond before venturing into the attic.

To be critical, the game could probably have sustained more major plot threads. Gone Home succeeds on novelty – if this form of gaming becomes a genre, the next big title will have to be far more elaborate. However, each thread is developed in unprecedented detail – I'm still finding new items that keep altering my interpretation of old ones. I'd love to talk about my reaction to the ending, but I'm honestly unwilling to spoil the sense of mystery that will enhance your experience so much.

Obviously, a game like this has plenty of space for indirect character development. Different priorities might hand the title of 'best female character' to other contenders as diverse as Clementine, Samus Aran or even GLaDOS, but it should be mentioned that Samantha Greenbriar is almost certainly the most thoroughly and satisfyingly characterised woman in the history of video games. Ironic really, since the excellently portrayed adolescence shows that she herself is still developing as a person.

The price has been a sticking point for many user reviews and it's not surprising. For the same money, it is easy to find games that offer 10 or 20 times the number of play hours with more replay value than Gone Home has. Pick the right one and you'll also get a game with far more features, able to tell a powerful story whilst also providing skill-based action and a spectacular visual feast. On the other hand, the price doesn't really seem excessive for the amount of genuine artistic effort that has gone into crafting this product. Gone Home is a game you splurge on because you want to have the awesome and thought-provoking experience it provides and on that basis I recommend it. If you do decide to buy it, go for the direct sales rather than Steam - $20 works out as less than £15 and the direct buy includes a code to unlock it on your Steam account whilst leaving you with a game that'll run without Steam being online. Console releases are coming, but this is a PC game originally.

Final Score: 8/10. It ain't Portal, but this short game deserves a look.

Best Item: Sam's Reproductive System Worksheet (Music Room). Hilarious and characterful.

Worst Item: Although it advances some ideas, I could have done without the contents of the hidden panel opposite Sam's room.

Review - Tomb Raider 2013

It's not often that a game truly lives up to my hopes.

My expectations are another matter. There are plenty of games that provide the sequences that they display on their trailers, along with the overall story and experience that is advertised by the increasingly terse blurb on their box covers. But with playable demos becoming increasingly rare, it is less and less common for me to buy a game because I've already played the entire first level and I want more.

In this environment, the game I actually buy is often one of several possible ideas of the game that I've got floating around in my head after absorbing the promotional material. Inevitably, there is a favourite amongst them – the version that I would have made if I'd had the opportunity to run with the concept the adverts are pitching at me. Often, this isn't the one that actually got created.

With Tomb Raider, I knew exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted a gritty game that focused on story. I wanted that story to be based around the development of the lead character. I wanted that development to show the transformation of a normal person into a full-on action hero without ever losing our initial empathy for the ordinary person we were presented with. Finally, given what we were seeing of the character's experiences, I didn't want the increase in power to be treated as 'empowering' by the character. The game that I got ticks every one of these boxes.

Tomb Raider 2013 is very much a linear story-based adventure game. Navigating your way to the objective will often trigger a cut-scene or extended set piece, the climax of which often serves to relocate you to a new area or at the very least provide you with pressing business at the next waypoint. This may bother some fans of sandbox style gameplay, but I found many of the set pieces to be far more exciting and engaging than anything the normal game AI could have served up from the default third person view.

I was initially disappointed at the lack of dialogue trees in the cut-scenes – having just played through the Walking Dead, I wanted to be forced to make the harsh survival choices myself. In the end, though, I came to accept the benefits of the less interactive approach. Lee Everett is a perfectly good character, but he basically became a mouthpiece through which my own views were expressed as I played Walking Dead. Having Lara declare what she wants to do and then having to go through with the result provides the character with a specific defined identity that you get to know over the course of the game.

You can explore most areas with some degree of freedom as you head toward your objective and a quick travel feature eventually becomes available to return to previous areas. Lara's level of agility is pleasing, but slightly dependant on whether a path is intended to be taken. Compared to the things you scale in the course of the adventure, the obstacles that can defeat you seem pretty minor if they aren't designed to be climbed. Each type of climbable surface always looks the same, so pathfinding is not a problem – although sometimes you feel a little led by the nose.

I found the story so engaging that I didn't use quick travel until after I'd completed the plot – going back to dig up artefacts and other items never seemed as pressing as the next objective. I did then take the time to achieve 100% completion, which also made narrative sense – the game even includes a final journal entry that only unlocks when you begin post-game play. Interestingly, most of the game's puzzle tombs are optional side areas that can be returned to in this way. This pleased me a great deal, since it meant that being stumped by a tomb didn't lock away the whole rest of the game for me. Although I was eventually able to solve them all, it was nice to be able to walk away after I got bored of missing the same jump and come back later after more practice.

Continuing the subject of traversal, Lara lacks a 'stealth crouch' which makes you feel awfully vulnerable when trying to sneak past enemies. This is perfectly appropriate when you consider how over-generous many games are regarding the invisibility this supposedly brings. Unfortunately, she also lacks a proper sprinting speed. It's undeniably impressive that Lara can keep moving at all after the punishment she takes, but I did sometimes wish she would amble toward cover a little faster when the air was filling with death. It's also unnerving to take such an unhurried run-up before jumping – but the reduced need to do so makes the jump puzzles far less frustrating.

Combat is satisfyingly bloody and vicious, with the regular foes being smart and tough enough to be scary at first and fragile enough to rack up a terrifying body count when you get your hand in at head shots and close combat kills. An obvious problem with portraying Lara's gradual evolution is that the player is probably already quite good at this. Lara might cry and puke the first time she kills someone, but once the gamer gets control of her she instantly becomes lightning fast and terrifyingly accurate.

The main way in which this is addressed is via the voice acting. Lara speaks quite often, and the gradual evolution of what she says does take much of the game. While an early game Lara says things like “please, you don't have to do this!”, a late game Lara says things like “that's right you bastards, I'm coming for you all!” The verbose enemies also become increasingly scared and desperate as the game goes on, displaying little of the suicidal misogynistic optimism of Catwoman's foes in Arkham City or the enforcers facing Nilin in Remember Me. I especially enjoyed hearing the last few enemies in a lengthy combat-filled level expressing dismay that I must have already killed everyone between themselves and the entrance. This in-game dialogue does a lot to limit the inevitable dissonance between play and cut-scenes.

The second technique used to portray the gradual rise in deadliness is the purchase of increasingly merciless skills with Experience points. Lara doesn't even get to hit people with her climbing axe until you reach tier two. Kneecapping someone with a held arrow before forcing your shotgun under their chin and pulling the trigger is very much an endgame move. The only thing I disliked about this progression was that (on the PS3 at least) new moves tended to overtake the key assignments of old ones. Burying an axe in someone's brain might be a lot more efficient than slinging grit in their eyes, but I still missed doing it.

Narratively, the game very much keeps to a lone character approach. Whilst several other crew members survive the shipwreck that strands Lara on the island, events usually conspire to split you up by the end of each shared cut-scene. I found the main character arc to be pretty satisfying as a heroic origin story. The first main area of growth lies in her responsibility toward the others – moving from miserable guilt and begging for aid to assuming leadership and acting as a defender. Indeed, her frequent moves to rescue the others instead of just looking out for number one stand out as the main thing that differentiates her from the head of the enemy cult. The second field of change lies in her attitude to the supernatural – initially dismissive, Lara gradually comes face to face with the kind of ancient magic that has always been a feature of her previous incarnation's adventures. The mix of these two elements alongside gradual toughening up provide the script with enough material to sustain the story. The final conclusion also provides motivation for further adventure – which thankfully doesn't come down to a need to repeat the adventurous thrills or make use of her new-found power.

Visually the game looks great. The graphics aren't quite as sharp as they look – hit pause and you'll see a fair few jagged lines in the frozen image – but are pretty effective when in full flow. For those of you with a PS4, an otherwise identical 'definitive edition' has recently been released with graphics upgraded to the specs of the new console. More importantly, the designers have faithfully adapted the distinctive style of the concept art to produce a recognisable style.

Unlike the previous Tomb Raider games, the protagonist isn't really presented in a sexualised way. Lara is still beautiful of course – and her voice is exquisite if you have a thing for posh British accents – but her clothing is pretty modest, her proportions realistic and the camera angles keep their mind on the job. Gradual model changes do cause her clothing to get torn to pieces during play, but this isn't done in a titillating fashion and is accompanied by subtle but copious scarring on the exposed skin.

It's not a perfect game, of course. The opening sequence is a bit disjointed and the game doesn't immediately hit its stride. Keep Lara separated from her companions limits the development they receive – each is distinctive but they don't really get to progress beyond one-dimensional stereotypes. Regenerating health undermines the grittiness of the violence, with damage only being consequential for a few seconds outside of plot-related injuries. Plot injuries are quite lasting, but being a Croft somehow seems to confer immunity to internal bleeding and infection. The decision to capture both motion and sound from Camilla Luddington's performance makes Lara's heavy breathing a little intrusive during arduous physical manauvers and the phrase 'I can do this' gets rather over-used in early voice-overs. Thankfully it largely gets phased out as she starts to actually believe it.

Some players may be displeased that the strong female lead spends sections of the game taking direct instructions from a male leader/father figure over her radio. On the other hand, this kind of voice in your ear feeding you objectives is perfectly normal for an adventure game and is less intrusive here than in many cases. Frankly the game probably needed a strong positive male figure somewhere – for various plot reasons almost all of the enemies are male.

The relentless suffering of Lara has also prompted some to question if the game is guilty of gender-inspired sadism. When you think about it, however, most action games consist almost entirely of being targeted for personal violence and struggling out of harmful environments. The difference here is that Lara reacts emotionally to these ordeals. There aren't many games out there that portray so much fear, anguish and uncertainty in a male lead – but it'd probably be better if there were.

Another possibly legitimate criticism is that this game isn't really a true successor to the Tomb Raiders we've seen before. Most of the tombs are literally optional side areas, the protagonist isn't there to titillate and whilst the game is in theory a prequel it is also a reboot that doesn't really work as a warm-up for the later games as they stand. However we might feel about these changes, it might be fairly complained that this game should have been an original title rather than cashing in on an existing brand name by paying lip service to it.

On the other hand, having a sense of where we are going really helps this origin story feel like it has direction – much like the reboot Batman Begins probably wouldn't work so well if we'd never heard of the guy. In particular, a couple of references to Lara's old twin pistol style give a sense of impending destiny that wouldn't exist otherwise.

DLC for the single player game is pretty limited. This probably speaks well of the basic game's story – it would be very hard to produce a story module that would plug in wherever you happened to be in the game at the time. I'd have liked to see a parallel story module covering the rest of the survivors, though. Available DLC consists of an optional extra tomb (which took me 40 minutes to strip at a very leisurely pace, including the extra 'this is DLC' loot-fest at the back) and six purely cosmetic extra costumes (each focused on one aspect of the character and all at least as modest as the default). These don't get damaged over play, but are otherwise fully integrated into the cutscenes. If it bothers you that Lara never loots a coat, get one of these. Oh, and you can also pay money for a limited selection of weapon upgrades and skills that are otherwise earned through salvage and EXP expenditure during play. If you really have no shame.

The game also has a multiplayer mode, which follows the common formula of using the game engine to run team deathmatch in a fashion that has changed little since the days of Quake. It's quite clever and pretty as such things go, but I really don't get why people value this part of these games as much as they do. Annoyingly enough, the multiplayer mode DOES feature croutch and sprint buttons that only work in this section of the game.

Some of the bad guy skins technically count as spoilers, so I wouldn't recommend going online until you've finished the single-player experience. If you're riding high on the feeling that you've survived all to emerge as some kind of invincible apex predator, a few rounds of multiplayer ought to kill that feeling for you nicely.

DLC is far more plentiful for multiplayer, consisting of new skins, new maps and (in a weird piece of market synergy) the weapons from Hitman: Absolution. Clearly, what the new Lara really needed was to be pointlessly associated with this:

Of course, no review of the game would be complete without mentioning the scene that attracted so much pre-release comment. Although barred by her NDA from attempting to cut in on all the free publicity, script author Rhianna Pratchett (the first woman to get the lead on a Tomb Raider game) has since made it clear that the scene is not intended to be about sexual assault, but entirely about the act of killing. Although there is an undeniable air of sexual menace to the sequence, failing any of the button presses appears to result in an immediate death by strangulation (the attacker has previously given the order to 'kill them all'). Succeed and the scene's lasting image will be how the man spends several seconds alive and trying to speak AFTER you blow a hole through his head (which funnily enough was omitted from the trailers).

Pratchett naturally wasn't too pleased about producer Ron Rosenberg's comments regarding the scene. She has stated that she absolutely didn't intend for the sexual assault element to be a pivotal moment in Lara's backstory – or she'd have made it worse. In her words, “if I felt that a female character needed sexual assault or rape as part of their backstory, it would be in there fully. Not as something you might see on Eastenders of a weeknight."

Final Score: 9/10. This game will likely remain one of my long-term favourites.

Best line: (Lara, dismissing supernatural myths about the Sun Queen) “A woman wields that much power, sooner or later someone will call it witchcraft.”

Worst line: (Excerpt from a found journal by another survivor) “I wish I could be more like Lara... she just blows me away. Not only is she brilliant, she's also an amazing ass kicker.”