Here’s the text version of a three minute polemic I gave at Develop’s Opinion Jam event.

A kind of Room 101 for game design ideas and/or features of the game industry, the idea is to change the audience’s mind on a subject in three minutes.

A vote is taken before you speak on the number of people who agree with your position (‘for’ or ‘against’ the thing you’re speaking on) and a vote is take once you’ve finished. The speaker who converts the highest number of attendees wins the competition.

I chose videogame marines as the thing I’d like to see banished from games and managed to change 4 1/2 minds which was OK (3rd I think).

After the event was finished EA Mythic’s Paul Barnett accosted me to explain why the words ‘Hoo-Rah’ are important and how he’d much rather play as a marine in a game than a limp-wristed hairdresser.

On cue Mathew Kumar stepped in to point out a hairdresser-based FPS would be nothing short of incredible. Beta males for the win.

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Hoo-Rah! Or, should I say, HOO-RAH!

If there is a sound a human can make that is more contemptible than this, I’m yet to hear it.

A primordial, ape-like cry, usually shouted in unison by strong men, it’s a noise that has punctuated countless videogame military missions in recent times. Like that moment when everyone in the huddle piles their hands on top of one another before flinging them upwards in a team binding moment, when all of the NPCs shout ‘Hoo-Rah’ in Call of Duty, Ghost Recon or Full Spectrum Warrior I feel like I’m on an American Football team.

Except instead of being an American Football player I’m a soldier, the ball is freedom and the touchline is the Iraqi border.

But it’s not this specific word, if we’re going to be so generous as to call it a word, that I’m calling to be banished from gaming, though its elimination will be a happy consequence of my choice, if all goes to plan.

Rather, I present its speaker: the Marine.

I realize calling for the elimination of America’s most-renowned military task force is grounds enough for 90-day terrorist detention, extradition to Guantanamo and forty minutes on the waterboard, so let’s be absolutely clear here. My beef isn’t with the lantern-jawed, flesh and blooded variety of marine, who I’m sure perform valuable service with their guns and muscles and stuff, but rather the specific videogame caricature of the marine.

Videogame marines, drunk on testosterone leaked from the pen of an overenthusiastic scriptwriter, are men to the power of men. They are man concentrate: a brawny, coarse, gruff, lewd and arrogant being who is meant to be aspirational to teenage boys but who really just represents everything that’s irritiating about men.

Shorthand for all that is masculine and powerful and mighty, the marine is poster boy for the Alpha male.

These are, I fully realize, criticisms that paint me as some sort of limp-wristed, cardigan-wearing, animal-loving, whiny liberal, vegan librarian and yes, I admit it: I am a Beta male.
But would it really hurt to be cast as a sensitive marine one time? Troy H. Jackson Jnr, who writes home to his mum every Thursday night, reads William Wordsworth under his GI Joe duvet at night and who never, ever shouts Hoo-Rah when he recieves an order from his sarge? (that’s the abbreviation for Sergeant, right?)

Look, I’m pretty sure it’s possible to have a swimming pool surplus of testorerone coursing through your alpha male veins and, at the same time, be erudite and droll, but I’m yet to play as a videogame marine who can manage both things at once.

Take, for example, this exchange of dialogue between a group of marines in a recent AAA title:

“Hey Seargeant Carpenbell, wassup? Me and my crew here are rolling with you today!

“We are ready to get saddled sir. It’s a good day for a medal.

“You feeling righteous today boys?

“Sir, yes sir, BOOSH!”

BOOSH. For when HOO-RAH just doesn’t cut it.

So it’s conclusive: the only way to make a palatable videogame marine to make him a mute one.

And when it comes to silent marines, Master Chief pretty much has things locked up.

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Please don’t shoot me.