Editor’s note: I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with violence in video games. I don’t have a problem with blowing foes up with photon torpedoes, but I don’t like shooting someone with a Glock. Mike wonders if we still need explicit violence in entertainment. -Jason
I’m very conflicted on whether I should really open up this topic. Every time someone talks about violence in gaming, it usually devolves into a large, Jack Thompson-esque debate on liability. That’s not the purpose of this piece.
We live in a violent world — that much is certain. The real world’s full of gang violence, war, and murder. As a gamer and a human being, I am aware that these things are happening in both the real world and the gaming world. Because of this, is violence really something that we want in our entertainment?
Violence as entertainment is nearly as old as humanity itself. Historical accounts of gladiatorial combat, bear/bull baiting, public executions, and such are easily attainable. People deemed these as acceptable forms of entertainment for many centuries. But here’s the question that I struggle with: Is watching violence the same as facilitating it, even if it is fictional?
For full-disclosure purposes, I’m not a huge fan of explicitly violent games. I do not like Grand Theft Auto, even though many of my friends are big fanboys of those games (in fact, many of them buy nothing but GTA and Madden). At the same time, I enjoy fighting games immensely, and hand-to-hand combat’s inherently violent. Am I a hypocrite? Probably, but let’s dive deeper into the subject.
Let’s define violent versus explicit violence. Almost every game where a confrontation takes place can be considered violent. Pac-Man, by this definition, is violent (even if it is self-defense). Mario, Zelda, Metroid, you name it and violence is in there for some point. I would not call these games, however, explicit. A game where you shoot someone and still see gore splattered behind the corpse on the wall…well, that seems explicit to me.
GTA’s a series based on portraying a violent criminal engaging in criminal acts. Many people praise the open world, the system of choices, and how you can make the game acknowledge most plans of action. I don’t like the idea of killing police officers and abusing women, but at the same time, I know that you can’t legislate taste and that people have a right to be entertained however they wish, provided it does no true physical harm.
I find that I defend violence in videogames a lot when it comes up in conversations. I praise the quality of the art, the storytelling mechanisms, and make the inevitable comparison between games and other media such as television, film, and literature. I also wholeheartedly agree that a game cannot make a person do anything they aren’t predisposed to doing, so if beating up hookers isn’t part of your psychology, GTA isn’t pushing you over the edge.
As a younger gamer, my appetite for explicit games was much higher than today. It was almost taboo, like sneaking into an R-rated movie. Nowadays, I can’t tell if the explicit nature of experiencing violence in games has turned me off, or if my taste has matured to a point where I just find the violence as window dressing and unnecessary. A game like Valkyria Chronicles is violent, because it’s about a war, but I don’t feel that it’s explicit.
Mortal Kombat was the poster child for violence in videogames in my youth. I thought Mortal Kombat 2 was the coolest thing that I’d ever seen. I was also banned from playing it, since my mother was convinced that I’d become an ax murderer from playing the game. This opinion was based mostly on hearsay, and when she followed me into an arcade once, she saw the game, asked what it was, and laughed at how ridiculous the “red-paint-looking blood” flying around was. She lifted the ban, and I tore many a head off many an opponent.
The graphical prowess of the current generation of systems simulates real violence much more strongly than an old arcade machine or 16-bit system could. I think that violence may be necessary in games, but I’m no longer impressed by explicit violent content in gaming. Sometimes, I think what you don’t see can be more powerful than something shoved in your face.
So, do we as a society need to move beyond explicit violence in gaming? Or is explicit violence still a strong and compelling storytelling method? Dialogue is important, and without it, we can’t move forward, so keep it clean, and let’s have some discussion.