Should you take 'Torture' seriously?

Winda Benedetti Citizen Gamer • E-mail

The young man responsible for “The Torture Game 2” doesn’t think you should take his little creation too seriously.

Sure, it’s a computer game in which you, the player, are asked to do horrible, unspeakable, and totally sick, sick, sick things to a defenseless man-like person tied up in some dark room from which he has absolutely no hope of escape. And, sure, one of the horrible, unspeakable, and totally sick, sick, sick things you might, perhaps, do to this man is put a chainsaw to his neck until his head falls off.

But it is, after all: Just. A. Game. As in, nobody really gets hurt.

Right?

“The Torture Game 2 ” — a sequel to “The Torture Game (1)” it turns out — is a free, and increasingly popular, Web game that can be found on gaming portals such as Newgrounds.com and Kongregate.com. And as the name of the game suggests, torture is pretty much, well, the name of the game.

Here, a pale, androgynous human hangs from ropes on the computer screen before you. Among the devices at your disposal —  a chainsaw, a razor blade, spikes, a pistol … and a paintbrush (take that!)

There’s little in the way of instructions and no points to be earned. Instead, this dangling ragdoll offers you a canvas to do with what you will — stab him with spikes, flay the skin from his body with a razor, pull his limbs off with your bare hands, paint him every color of the rainbow. No matter what you do to him, he never screams and his expression never changes. He only utters a vague “uuungh” when you’ve inflicted enough damage to kill him.

And that’s pretty much it.

“The Torture Game 2” caught my attention recently when Derek Yu, editor-in-chief of the respected indie gaming site TIGsource.com, posted a link to it. He’d been intrigued by the screenshot artwork some people were making from the game — colorful, inventive and sometimes macabre paintings created using the in-game blood splatter and the paint option.

But his post set off a debate among his readership, one made up mostly of gamers and game developers themselves. Some were so put off by the senseless violence they vowed never to return to TIGsource.com again. Others defended the game as a perfectly reasonable gaming exploration. Others worried that this was just the kind of ammunition the game haters would use to further their various game-hating causes.

“In my opinion, a piece of software whose entire idea revolves around torturing someone to see how long you can keep them alive should have no need to exist,” wrote one TIGsource reader.

“I think this is very disgusting, but at the same time, quite interesting,” wrote another. “Torture is the most repulsive thing I can think of … But it is a good tool to measure how stunted your empathy is.”

Because I could
Their conversation played out much like the one bouncing around in my own head. As a general rule, I believe so-called violent video games are a perfectly acceptable form of entertainment and escapism for adults, the majority of these games being no worse than the violent films crowding the silver screens at our local multiplexes. Heck, I play violent video games. Many of the people I know and love play violent video games. And we’re all perfectly … eh … normal.

But this game…it pushed even my bloodthirsty limits.

Unlike most video games that come with a healthy dose of hack-and-slash, “The Torture Game 2” offers no story to give context to your actions. Your victim … he’s simply hanging there, waiting for you. Meanwhile, the game’s ragdoll physics lend a sickeningly hypnotic charm to the whole affair. With every touch of your cruel hand, every cut of the chainsaw, your victim sways, bounces and dances like some fleshy marionette.

And while you could choose to do nothing worse than splatter him with paint, most players probably won’t stop there. I didn’t. Curiosity got the better of me and before I knew it I was jabbing giant spikes into his belly, peeling back his face to the bone, and sawing the poor guy’s head from his neck. Because I could.

And though I knew that my actions caused this computer man no real pain, I couldn’t help but notice that it was painful … for me. I felt my shoulders knot up as I played. I felt my stomach do an unpleasant little flippity-flop. I felt guilty.

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