The only time I had serious trouble with GTA5’s violence was when going through the torture scene, something I just won’t be repeating. Bye bye 100% on GTA5!

FPSes I stopped playing a LONG time ago, not because of the violence either, just the basic fact it’s the same tired formula every time; go here, shoot that, walk through this map shooting, then shoot some other stuff etc etc.

I’ve always played with “my conscience” whenever I’m able. Games that actively punish the player for mindless violence have always been welcomed by me. Things like being “de-synchronised” for randomly killing innocents in Assassin’s Creed keeps the less involved player from making the game a senseless violent mess.

Another great article Ted, and another interesting comment section born from it. I wish we could go for a beer! lol

I can imagine the time factor in creating these games. It would be refreshing to see game developers create fresh new stories and try limiting themselves on how much hardcore violence is necessary to deliver a quality experience.

Great article Ted!

Now, the Final Fantasy series faced a different situation -- your primary antagonists were human, but you spent most of your time fighting random creatures that inhabit the world. The game may not give an in-universe explanation as to why every single creature you face is encountered through a battle; they simply exist as cannon fodder for the protagonists to level up, in order to take on the next boss. I can point to FFIV as a great example -- Kefka is one of the most effective villains in the franchise, and the story provides some great characterization on his part, so you know you had to take him down to save the planet. But what about the other living beings who share the same space as you? You’re looking at wolves, prehistoric creatures (such as the Cartarga) and even plans (such as the Rafflesia) -- probably due to their insignificance to the story, they’re nothing more than the stock “baddies” one must attack if you wish to level up.

That goes back to the Jay and Silent Bob quote you mentioned; fantasy RPGs offer quite a range of wildlife, but they unilaterally impede your progress, since they’re coded to simply be for the fight. We don’t really associate with them on a personal level, as they’re a dime a dozen -- there’s an odd sort of satisfaction in killing untold numbers of non-human animals, as if the empathy we share for fellow humans doesn’t extend to the rest of the animal kingdom.

If anything, games don’t quite reflect a violent society, at least not completely; the vast majority of us can identify good and bad ways of resolving situations, and games such as Call of Duty: Black Op and The Last of Us unnerve us precisely because they put the player in a very uncomfortable situation. The humans in these games aren’t physically corrupted by a virus (a la Resident Evil) or so monumentally evil that the world would be safer without their presence -- they’re presented as average humans who unfortunately happened to be on the “wrong” side of a video game. And that’s likely a major contributing factor; games simplify what would be very complicated international issues in real life, and the player navigates an environment wherein the primary objective is to shoot and move on (in the case of FPSes, anyway).

The moral dilemmas posed by recent games makes me think of how much gaming has changed. No longer can we expect a game to provide a simple narrative where you, the hero, fight through numerous underlings to reach the final boss and save the day -- a formula that made Mario games fun in their own right. But as the New Hollywood movement affected the presentation of protagonists, so did games such as The Last of Us; that “safety net” of the Good Fight against the Forces of Evil is thwarted by the real human cost of the experience.

That being said, I loved your article, Ted. I’d agree with your perspective on violence at the end -- growing older, we understand violence more, and it’s a terrible thing to inflict upon a society. Games that present a heavy dose of violent confrontation remind me of how films were like from the ‘6os onward; we’ve had films like the horror movies starring Peter Cushing, the Troma studios releases, RoboCop, Rambo, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, Taxi Driver and a host of others. The difference here is that you personally get involved in the storyline -- you’re the protagonist, wading through a sea of social insanity, but for what? Maybe there’s a slight nihilistic undertone to all this, what with how we treat NPCs that fight us, but that’s the risk developers took when creating these games.