Devcom perspectives: The uncomfortable and familiar topic of video game violence

It has been a tense and horrifying year of mass shootings in the U.S., with the blame falling on many issues, including President Donald Trump and the guns. Trump himself tried to shift blame to violent video games, which he said led to a “glorification of violence” in mass culture. Although no research supports a connection between violent games and real-world violence, the game industry is on the defensive again. We tackled that subject at Devcom, the recent game developer conference in Cologne, Germany.

The panel was entitled, “The uncomfortable and familiar topic of video game violence.” Most of the coverage of this issue has been pretty thin, but we tried to probe deeper into the issues related to game violence with a diverse panel of game developers who have made different choices about how to depict violence and its consequences.