Okay, I might say this because I usually play on the Nintendo consoles, and Nintendo franchises appeal to both younger and older players, and even the games who are targeted at slightly older players don’t rely on extremely gory violence. Metroid and Zelda are arguably the best examples for this: In both games, you encounter and fight enemies, and of course, you often have to kill those enemies to proceed. But doing so doesn’t involve endless streams of blood and gore. It’s all obviously unrealistic and fantastic (in some Zelda games it’s even slightly cartoony), and that’s the reason why I’m okay with it.

Thanks to “all out” capitalism, almost everything is lead by accountants and graphics now. You can see the same trend in pretty much everything. Profits are king, and if you dare question a company social psychology you will be quickly reminded that. If they can increase the profit margin, than they are right.

You can see the same trend everywhere. A good example is radio. More and more station are turning to be either a commercial top 20 or a trash radio of some sort. The general appreciation of radio is at a all time low, but the ratings are holding… barely, but holding.
The thing is, you make more money with a moderate success in a big market than with a huge hit in a niche. Times are at big company eating each other more than financing new, innovative, small ones.
And if you think that gore is the new thing gaming company invented to lure the masses. Just remember the roman coleseum…
Nope Gary, this has nothing to do with the capacity of a gaming console.

Anyway, I like your point of view and way of thinking.

THis article and it’s point of view could just as easily have been written about some movies or perhaps even novels. Yes? No?

There are non-shooter games still popular even on Home so the revolution is not won or lost.

Sadly, games like Shadow of the Colossus, Ico or The Last Guardian are slow to make, because it’s not just a case of whipping a dark map together with generic corridors and enemy spawn points thrown in. There’s a lot more that goes into something like Flower than say, Bullet Storm. But the general demographic for gaming are males from 14-30. On consoles anyway. I did read that the social side of gaming are filling up with women though, but what they’re playing tend to be just as lazy, badly regurgitated gunk like Farmville clone No.145.

Truth is, originality is hard to come up with, and it’s even harder to convince an investor to take a chance on something new that might not be well received. The blood-lust of the masses of teenage boys that scream the loudest for gore is what the executives hear. It’s a simple formula and takes little effort to give, so why try hard on a new IP when you can just get money for old rope?

Until the attitudes of the “core gamer” changes, and we stop baying for blood and start asking for FUN, or (god forbid) HUMOR in our *entertainment* the stream of shooters will just keep flowing. I know of a few games that do not depend on gore and guns and happen to be fantastic if you want any pointers Ted.

Oh, and BTW, well said mate.