What's wrong with "Shock Value?"

[s_bushido]

A criticism you hear thrown around a lot for various media is "that was just done for shock value." I have to wonder, what's so bad about that? Is there something wrong with making your audience sit up and say "holy ****!"

The question came up because of MGS: Ground Zeroes. Not to spoil anything, but some pretty terrible shit goes down in a relatively short amount of time (seeing as it's basically just a demo). Personally, I found it very affecting, and a major contributing factor is that it's mostly just audio, so your imagination is working against you.

...but it all just gets dismissed as the writers/director trying to be edgy. It seems strange to me that people would want to limit the storytelling tools available to writers. Making the audience squirm every now and then surely can't be a bad thing.

Thoughts?

[obdigore]

My main issues with 'Shock Value' based experiences is that they:

1) Generally are used to cover up lacking gameplay/stories.
2) Lower the re-experience value if you know what is going to happen.
and
3) Are sometimes far over the top of what is needed to get the point across.

I've not played MGS: Ground Zeroes but I've read lots of books (GRRM I'm looking at you) and experienced this a couple other times (No Russians level in COD:MW2). I don't find it good story telling, or generally believable at all.

[SodiumChloride]

Nothing wrong with it.

You either like the story or you don't.

[Super Kami Dende]

A whole bunch of reasons.

Reason No.1) People are whingers that like to complain about anything.

I guess it was really only 1 reason.

[Stir]

'Shock value' as a tool is not 'just for shock value.'
'Just for shock value' is an easy way to entertain by drawing on someone's immediate emotional response without adding anything of depth, contemplation or worth to the content. Shock value can add to those things, but is all too often used in order to get away with shitty storytelling, or to blow up a minor story to proportions of grandeur it really doesn't actually possess.

[s_bushido]

1) Generally are used to cover up lacking gameplay/stories.

Yeah, I can see that. I guess I'm just too forgiving an audience sometimes. If something gets to me in the moment, I usually consider that mission accomplished.

About re-experiencing it...well, nothing's the same the second time around. Once you find out the big twist or experience the big shocker, you'll never be able to get that feeling back.