[CW: violence/gore]. As the title suggests, is there a left case to be made against ultra-violence in video games? I’m thinking mostly about MK11 and MK1 fatalities, as opposed to less gratuitous and less hyper-realistic violence–in Dark Souls or something. Whenever this topic is brought up, other factors usually take up the oxygen in the room: People might immediately think of family-values conservatives, such as the Media Research Center, who act like wet-blankets towards entertainment. Or we think of nerdy Joe Lieberman, who showed the 1993 Sub-Zero spine fatality to Congress (lol). There was Hillary Clinton who decried the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the host of rightwing politicians who blamed Doom for the Columbine shooting (clearly as a way to absolve gun legislation from any culpability). So this is what I mean when I say that the conversation on video-game violence has been ceded entirely to these dudes, as opposed to something left spaces can discuss without sounding like squares or censors. This came to mind after I was reading about the video game designer who developed PTSD after working on Mortal Kombat 11. His dreams became excruciatingly violent, and his day-to-day was interacting with coworkers studying medical anatomy and watching videos of slaughtered animals. That can’t be good for anyone. I guess what I’m asking is: should leftists see this as harmless fun, or something problematic? And, will photo-realistic Fatalities exist in the communist future?
I think some ultraviolence in video games is okay when it’s presented as a bad thing. Hotline Miami comes to mind where it forces the player to look at what they’ve done and reflect on it. It turns the adrenaline pumping action sequences into horror as you realize you and your character are not right in the head. You’re forced to quietly reflect as you exit the building past dead and mutilated bodies.
One of the problems I’ve had with modern games is how much they normalize the military. It’s no secret the DoD and CIA have their hands in video games. They can use unrealistic violence as a recruiting method. Players get used to the idea of blowing up Arabs with goofy ragdoll physics, completely isolating them from the violence inflicted in the real world.
Saving Private Ryan caused military recruitment to drop and it never recovered, even after 9/11. The powers that be realized they dropped the ball but were saved by pivoting to video games. A game with Come and See, Saving Private Ryan, or Schindler’s List levels of realistic violence could potentially turn people off to war as a game. This has never been done as far as I’m aware.
Good take. Playing Doom and killing demons? Based. Killing super nazis in wolfenstein? Based. Killing “terrorists” as you roleplay a US soldier? Kinda cringe.
The only attempt I can think of is Spec Ops: The Line, but I don’t think it’s had a particularly impactful role in the long term.
Inspired by Heart of Darkness, it sets you in the shoes of John McSuperCool Operator, on a CIA spec-ops mission to investigate a rogue US battalion in Dubai.
As you progress, you basically get deeper and deeper into the shit because John thinks it’s his personal duty to be a hero and stop the commander of the rogue battalion, only for him to progressively kill more and more people that didn’t need to die, culminating in wiping out an entire group of civilian refugees with white phosphorous and being confronted with the reality that he’s a fucking monster.
There’s a lot of arguments about whether the game ends up being a valid critique of the COD formula or not, but it definitely looks like it was at least ‘trying’ something.
Spec Ops: The Line was pretty good but the white phosphorous scene felt a little forced to me. Like, you have to use the war crimes weapon on a group that as a player you’re thinking “nah I could probably sneak/shoot through that” and the game doesn’t let you make the choice of not massacring civilians. For most of the game when you do something awful, you the player are doing it because you have John SpecOps’s warped perspective, but then the game gives a big “do an obvious war crime” button and forces you to push it to proceed.
They gave the concept a good try though.
Yeah that scene also fell a little flat for me. The specific scene takes place on an enclosed rooftop area where you’re dealing with a bunch of dudes on other rooftops around a plaza, and it’s actually not hard to “win” the gunfight by any reasonable metric but, unlike anywhere else in the game that I can remember, the guys just keep spawning infinitely to force you to hit the war crime button.
However, I don’t think we’re the target audience. The game was meant, I think, to force the average Call of Duty or whatever player to think of all those faceless brown goons they’re always using as target practice as the things that they represent, to force a bit of perspective back into the kinds of games that they enjoy. I mean, these players are literally dropping nukes, executing helpless enemies, etc. Most of them don’t think twice about committing virtual war crimes.
Very interesting. I hadn’t thought about the “use” of violence in an anti-military way before.
I’m going to out myself as somewhat of a contrarian here and say that most of the violence in videogames is bad. While drawing straight lines from media violence to real-life violence is basically impossible and ridiculous, I find it just as ridiculous to say that media representations of the world do not have any impact on the real world. And the fact that this newest medium that is videogames finds most of its interactivity in violence just seems plain not good to me.
There are reasons for it obviously, two of which are wonderfully laid out in these two videos, one of which tries to explain the prevalence of violence in games , basically arguing that violence has become so deeply ingrained in game design since it provides obvious win/lose-states, and this other one which tries to explain the prevalence of shooters in post-3d gaming, arguing that shooters best solve the issue of camera control in games by turning the camera into the main way of interacting with the game world (it is of course no coincidence that videogame controllers are used extensively in military applications).
This is of course not an indictment of the medium of videogames in themselves, but an indictment of the industry which has put profit over any sort of artistic intent probably more than any other media industry ever has. There is little to no incentive to try to make games with less or no violence - even games like stardew valley can’t help but feature some sort of combat - when violence works. And it seems to work so well that videogames feature magnitudes more violence than any other medium.
The french director Truffaut famously said something along the lines of: “You can’t make an anti-war film, because war will inevitably look exciting up on the screen.” If there is a truth to this for movies, to me it seems almost undoubtedly true for games. Naughty Dog gave us the perfect example for it: The Last of Us 2. Created as both a response to the complaints of “ludonarrative dissonance” that were lobbed at Uncharted (this is conjecture on my part) and self-admittedly by the games director Neil Druckmann as a response to the 2000 Ramallah lynching. It’s this stupid fucking “cycle of violence and revenge” bullshit story that only a zionist could write, but that’s not really important for my argument.
TLOU2 is probably one of the most expensive, most prestigious games ever made, the absolute spearhead of “cinematic storytelling” in videogames, while also being one of the few to try to have an “important” real-life message. It’s an incredibly brutal game, both the actions of the player and the non-player characters are incredibly violent and rendered in vivid detail (the devs here did also look at footage of mutilated humans for inspiration), presumably because the story they wanted to tell to them necessitated that level violence. As an interactive prestige videogame however, they also made sure that that violence is as satisfying and engaging as possible. The controls are as tight, the camera moves as smooth around the gameworld as it possibly could, there are no cuts when you go for an execution-style finisher, you can upgrade your weapons by scavenging for parts, there’s a skill-tree, you can go into new game plus and keep your upgrades, etc. It’s all designed to be as engaging and “fun” as possible. So is the extreme violence actually there to tell a story or to be satisfying and fun?
It’s very obviously the latter and the devs couldn’t be more upfront about it, since in January they released the remastered version of this game, which includes a roguelike mode, in which you battle against human and zombies in a classic horde mode. The same fucking violence, the same mechanics that were just previously there to tell a dark gritty and “important” story about revenge and israel and palestine are now there for you to enjoy in perpetuity. Violence all the fucking time, for your amusement again and again and with no end. The fact that they released it during the ongoing genocide in gaza is a genuine indictment for the videogame industry and community as a whole.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
This came to mind after I was reading about the video game designer who developed PTSD after working on Mortal Kombat 11. His dreams became excruciatingly violent, and his day-to-day was interacting with coworkers studying medical anatomy and watching videos of slaughtered animals.
This is totally off tangent and I feel for this guy but he really shouldn’t have done this. I worked in VFX for several years (which is what radicalized me) and for most of those years I was the resident gore guy on some movies and TV shows you’ve probably seen. I learned very early on that medical photos and footage of real human wounds and sketchy website videos of slaughtered animals are not only mentally corrosive to look and morally questionable take make art out of, they’re also dog shit quality as photo references almost uniformly.
But you know what looks just like the skin on someone’s scalp cracking open from blunt trauma? A pumpkin after it’s been dropped. Wanna know what looks like skin sloughing off a face that’s been doused in acid? A delicious pizza losing its melty cheese. Wanna know what looks like a hideous boil the size of a baseball oozing pus? A freshly cut chocolate lava cake with it’s caramel dripping out. There is an endless supply and variety of food stock photography available cheaply online. I actually don’t know if this is standard practice, but it definitely should be.
As we learned from the production of Dead Space, being forced to look at mangled bodies and surgeries came down from management
It’s the exact sort of thing some asshole would think “makes it genuine”
Hell, I’m past the “innate transgression of violence and gore” phase, I want shit to look goofy aka Mortal Kombat was better when you uppercut a guy’s head and fifteen ribcages and a spleen fly out
That sucks about Dead Space. I didn’t know about that until now.
I used to really like the Mortal Kombat games. The KMFDM movie soundtrack still slaps.
The “authenticity” era and the toxic hogs that insisted that their violence could be produced no other way than causing emotional distress to game developers soured my feelings toward the franchise, though.
Hell, I’m past the “innate transgression of violence and gore” phase
Whenever someone says “(product) is for babies” because of a perceived lack of
, the usual implication is that something edgy, vulgar, and/or sensationalistic is the definition of “mature” that everyone after a certain age should, or even must, performatively gobble up that kind of slop for maturity points.Hell, Dead Space 2 had their “Your mom would hate this game!” ad campaign in 2011
I was old enough to drink
that was extremely funny but not in the manner they intended
But you know what looks just like the skin on someone’s scalp cracking open from blunt trauma? A pumpkin after it’s been dropped. Wanna know what looks like skin sloughing off a face that’s been doused in acid? A delicious pizza losing its melty cheese. Wanna know what looks like a hideous boil the size of a baseball oozing pus? A freshly cut chocolate lava cake with it’s caramel dripping out. There is an endless supply and variety of food stock photography available cheaply online. I actually don’t know if this is standard practice, but it definitely should be.
That should be standard practice because it reduces suffering to the workers and the treat is roughly the same in the end result.
Plus they do this with sound already via foley techniques. Some visual art swaps out alternatives for real subjects, like using shaving cream instead of whipped cream since it won’t melt under studio lighting. The demand for “authenticity” is from corporate ghouls with no imagination.
Same deal with sound; the classic “bones snapping/crunching” sound is actually from snapping fresh celery. Actual bone snapping sounds aren’t used because, well it’s just doesn’t carry the same sonic punch.
I worked in VFX for several years (which is what radicalized me)
what radicalized you?
Obviously, traumatizing your workers should be a crime. That being said, I think abhorring violence is liberalism tbh. It isn’t the violence of the video games that is an issue, it is the culture around the violence. If you can shoot a gun in a game, it’s a big difference if that gun is aimed at a Nazi vs a ‘jihadi militant’ or whatever racist shit COD is about.
I think there’s a level of hyperrealistic ultraviolence where it’s genuinely impossible to not have a high risk of causing trauma to people. We have absolutely crossed past the point where media is now being produced that even in a vacuum absent of the culture around the violence, the violence itself has become traumatic.
Arguing over whether pokemon or Elden ring are too violent is silly, but we’ve reached a point where some game developers are now being expected to learn incredibly detailed aspects of physics and human anatomy specifically so that they can create upsetting body horror animations that are indistinguishable from real torture.
This stuff isn’t healthy for anyone to create or to view, and shouldn’t be a thing. I don’t care if you’re creating the world’s most based game about Lyudmila Pavlichenko killing Nazis, there’s a point where the gore becomes purely for the sake of itself and actively unhealthy for anyone to engage with in any way.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your take, I got partially distracted near the end.
the world’s most based game about Lyudmila Pavlichenko killing Nazis
What is the difference between a gory video game and a gory movie? Are you suggesting that people should not be able to decide of their own free will to engage with these forms of media? Where would the line be drawn? Who would draw the line? Again, no one’s livelihood should be on the line if they don’t want to engage with it, but if people choose to traumatize themselves, who is to say they can’t?
If we want to call ourselves revolutionary communists, we have to imagine a world where we pick up arms and actually engage in war. Even the most ultraviolent video games are literal child’s play compared to that. We can’t sit here and be afraid of Mortal Kombat.
Literally what is the point of communism if our goals are not to protect people and improve lives? Treatbrained nonsense.
You do not need be exposed to gore, and the process of making it is actively harmful to workers. We’re not sitting here “afraid” of mortal kombat, there’s just a point where worker rights needs to be prioritized over your desire for simulated snuff treats, and we’ve already gone well past the point.
Workers’ rights should be protected, but communism doesn’t really have anything to do with gore in entertainment. If you don’t need to subject yourself to violence to earn a living, but someone else does because it’s interesting to them, then what? Who are you protecting at that point? Consumers?
there’s just a point where worker rights needs to be prioritized over your desire for simulated snuff treats, and we’ve already gone well past the point.
Literally all of my comments have said that the workers should be protected. If everyone consents to making a violent video game without coercion then there’s no reason to stop them.
Literally what is the point of communism if our goals are not to protect people and improve lives?
How is banning violent video games improving lives? How is it protecting people? The point of communism is not to prevent someone from getting scared because they actively chose to consume violent media.
Are you suggesting that people should not be able to decide of their own free will to engage with these forms of media?
If everyone consents to making a violent video game without coercion then there’s no reason to stop them.
“If everyone consents to working in the collapsing asbestos mine without coercion then there’s no reason to stop them.”
Literally every argument you’ve made in favor of this has just been libertarian Consensual Capitalism nonsense.
Most people don’t seem to be genuinely interested in doing this work or making this type of content, either, outside of the structure of being assigned to do it by their corporate employer. The indie games that do lean into this trope of realistic ultraviolence based on real life gore have all had this triple whammy of fascist developers, reveling in making others uncomfortable as the first and only goal, and not really having the interest or skill to make a game that people will want to play. That’s where we got things like Agony and Hatred, both of which hover right around the 40% mark of shame on review sites.
I’m not saying that all violence in video games should be banned, I’m saying that there’s a level of realistic violence being produced in media that has gone beyond the level of reasonable and shouldn’t be allowed for the same reasons that surgeons shouldn’t be allowed to skip handwashing, that parents shouldn’t be permitted to deny their children vaccines, and that bikers shouldn’t be allowed to ride without a helmet. These are unreasonable and troubling risks that people shouldn’t be permitted to consent to.
It’s fiction. It’s not real. If you have an actual study that shows that it causes actual harm, I’ll listen to you but until then you’re just making moralistic argument for no discernable reason besides that it makes you feel icky.
Most people don’t seem to be genuinely interested in doing this work or making this type of content, either
Bullshit. The Indie horror scene is and has always been huge. People enjoy it and IT DOESNT HURT ANYONE so there’s no reason to outlaw it. What does need to be outlaws is coercive business practices that keeps employees from having to experience these forms of media against their will. Again every single one of my comments has been pro-worker. You would rather impress your own morals on others without ANY scientific backing or attempt to understand another’s point of view. You are literally saying the same arguments that SWERFS say to attack sex workers.
Believe it or not, I think communism is about raising up the proletariat, not policing video games.
there’s a point where the gore becomes purely for the sake of itself and actively unhealthy for anyone to engage with in any way.
This is generalizing. I’ve watched fictional media where bodies are dissolved in acid or decapitated or whatever, and I can sleep and eat just fine. I don’t think about it at all.
But I have also accidentally stumbled upon cartel or ISIS execution videos, and even edited/blurred/off camera/text descriptions of said videos haunt me. I am able to tell what’s real and what’s fake, and I never want to stumble on the real things again if I can help it. I’ve never seen the video, but there’s a particular Russian snuff film that I read the wikipedia article of when I was a kid. I still don’t seek this shit out, and I try to avoid any articles that even mention its name.
Likewise, I can watch videos of zionists getting blown up because they’re kicking a random flag in the middle of nowhere and smile like an idiot, but I would still be traumatized over videos of Palestinians’ charred bodies and would never willingly click to view it.
My very specific issue with the mentioned violence is when it is an expected obligation of the workers making it to watch gore/snuff videos for “authenticity” purposes at the cost of their jobs if they refuse. That was the case particularly with recent Mortal Kombat games that you mentioned, that have left behind the comic-book-like violence of the past for the aforementioned “authenticity.”
Last year, a particularly toxic treat defender wished me a self-inflicted violent death for insisting that I do not think workers should have to experience emotional distress to the point of needing therapy afterwards just to keep their jobs.
Last year, a particularly toxic treat defender wished me a self-inflicted violent death for insisting that I do not think workers should have to experience emotional distress to the point of needing therapy afterwards just to keep their jobs.
What subreddit was this?
It was here.
Removed by mod
You literally just attacked someone for absolutely no discernible reason, you’re the toxic weirdo
Not the same person (I think so, anyway), but whatever I missed while I was away, I assume it was in a similar spirit of
reaction against how I feel about game developers getting forced into emotional distress to keep their jobs.
I’m guessing the treat defender was defending their treats here on Hexbear.
if so hope they got banhammer’d
Yes, yes they did.
Bonus: they used AVGN for their Hexbear avatar.
god bless the mods! Could we get a QRD on the angry video game nerd? I dont know much about this small business owner other than their thing is making video game review vlogs and are a famous, old youtuber.
I don’t actually know much about AVGN except through cultural osmosis, and that he was maybe Patient Zero of the “rage as a personality” gimmick for Youtube celebrities.
Maybe he’s relatively okay and not an Onision-tier creep. His fandom tends to suck, like the fandom of TotalBiscuit that used to go around bullying indie developers for not having sacred holy FOV sliders or 60+ FPS.
His fandom tends to suck, like the fandom of TotalBiscuit that used to go around bullying indie developers for not having sacred holy FOV sliders or 60+ FPS.
bullying indie developers for not having sacred holy FOV sliders or 60+ FPS.
what a miserable bunch of foolsdoesn’t justify bullying (except of the director who said said ableist shit and refused to put one in wolfenstein) but fov is an accessibility issue and not having one in a game where camera movement can cause motion sickness or trigger migraines is comparable to having no accommodation for colorblindness
You’re back?! Welcome back! I read this comment and said “huh, sounds like Ulysses” then saw your username haha .
depends on the violence and depends on the game, blanket statements about ‘what subjects belongs in media’ are ill-considered. for example, i would say that call of duty is ‘worse’ than something like Halo, since it is more engaged with the american cultural context of imperialism and glorification of imperialist militaries, whereas halo is essentially the same aesthetically as a child banging plastic sci fi aliens and spacemen together going ‘pew pew’, even if it does have an element of jingoistic NATO realism in its plot.
Games are also at a weird intersection of Fiction and Sport and Technology, the story in Halo is essentially filler to justify the Fun Jumping and Shooting, the fun jumping and shooting is only there to justify the Xbox Hardware, and the contrivance of it even being a Shooting game is a result of the common control surfaces in gaming (another poster mentioned FPS as a solution to camera control), and the fact that doing ‘sports’ on a screen is necessarily less engaging than real life, necessitating some kind of narrative ‘stakes’ that make the on-screen activities seem Important and Momentous and Meaningful - and yanking the in-game stakes up to (virtual) Life or Death instead of just ‘Win or Lose A Game’ is a convenient way to accomplish this.
definitely agree that a major game corporation forcing employees to look at gore as a condition of employment is fucked up, but at the same time i don’t think like, a solo indie dev that chooses to do that to themselves while making a free game should be criticized or penalized in the same way.
also in general we should base decisions like this on like, tangible empirical material studies, instead of trying to derive media policy from first principles. for example its possible that ‘violent games made under western neoliberal capitalism’ are bad, and that ‘violent games made under worldwide communism’ are not bad, due to all kinds of hard to quantify cultural factors, there are far too many variables to isolate to flat out say ‘all violence in video games makes you a worse person’, based purely on one’s personal anecdotes, that is an absolutely unhinged take
The studies we’ve done on violent media seem to fall along the same lines as other studies. The short and simplified version is: media is really bad at influencing behavior but its really good at influencing viewpoints and perspectives. In this sense: violent media doesn’t make you more prone to do violence…but it can change how you perceive violence. That fact is especially problematic and complicated when you consider things like Call of Duty which ultimately serve to glorify and revere military violence. I have mixed feelings on it myself and I’d personally argue to let it be…but I definitely think there’s a leftist case to make against violent media when you see it through that lens.
The developer who sounds like they were traumatized from having to stomach horrific imagery seems less to me like an issue with violent media and more like worker exploitation TBH. Plenty of people create horror movies out of passion and love. The issue is this person clearly was uncomfortable with the work but essentially had no alternative if they wanted to maintain employment.
Thesis: Violent video games cause violence
Antithesis: Violent video games do not influence human behavior whatsoever
Synthesis: Call of Duty is effective recruitment propaganda for the US military
When I was in highschool i got really obsessed with the concept of conditioning as taught by my psych class - operant conditioning and stuff being described in the simplest terms possible - and that led to weird places later in life. You can read between the lines if you want, but that’s not why I’m here. I only wish to convey the start of a lifelong journey of deliberate self conditioning, taking the reigns of how I think and do in a way a lot of people surrender to their environment, chance, and genetic factors, i chose to control as much as one can.
This is hard work, it comes easier to some than others, but it gives me an understanding of how our inputs inform our outputs.
The major behavioral changes I really invested myself in were shedding ‘male’ coded thought pattern and behavior in favor of the feminine, but from the moment I undertook that work, I found that my inputs, largely dictated by circumstance and male socialization in the past, were informing my own plasticity - the flexibility of who i could be, because in some level the inputs - the media, the conversations i had - the people i surrounded myself with - all contributed to a reinforcement of what was already there, and continued development along axes i no longer found personally fulfilling.
so… i cut myself off from a lot of media. I was busy already, the free time I had no longer made sense as something i would waste on passive entertainment and matters that didn’t improve myself somehow - video games became very unimportant to me, between hormonal changes and a dissatisfaction with my own mental treadmill - and especially violent games, violent media, pornography, etc.
My behavior changed. Say nothing of the hormones - the constant exposure of these elements normalized and reinforced toxic tendencies, and de-sensitized me to real human suffering that, within some months of re-ordering the inputs in my life, began to fade away and give way to a much more genuine expression of self.
I believe violent video games worsen us as humans. I believe the media we consume is largely tailored to reinforce worldviews that, even if only grudgingly, accept casual cruelty and violence at every level of society, and especially convey a sense that this is how it needs to be - and this is how American capital has largely captured the hearts and minds of its citizenry - even those of us unwilling to actually cooperate find ourselves pulled and forcibly immersed in this context that’s reinforced by this kind of media.
So to me, no - the communist utopia of the unwritten future has none of this fucking shit in it - because this shit makes us worse people.
That’s hard to square. I know. This garbage is the easiest dopamine pump we have, and at this point your treats are load bearing things - you would actually wanna do something stupid to remediate your material conditions if you didn’t have them - and that’s the point - this is the shit that makes you sleep. This is the shit Nada comprehends in black and white plain text when he puts his glasses on. You have to step away and refuse it to break out and perceive the tomorrow you yearn for with the religiosity of a devout Catholic seeking divine union.
i have largely cut myself off from such media as well, only this is a new thing for me. I worry that some of the things I have seen through films, television, video games, etc, over my lifetime will haunt me forever! I worry that I will age and remember random horrific scenes from a movie or something, and forget that it isn’t a real memory of my own.
Ever since I stopped…I’ve come to develop the opinion that the world will never be free until they cease poisoning our brains from cradle to grave…it’s disgusting what capitalism has done with the help of media technology. we wonder why our friends and family are absolutely helpless in the face of modern media. it has warped all our brains, imo, and I wish that I had had the sense to try what you did earlier on.
I believe violent video games worsen us as humans. I believe the media we consume is largely tailored to reinforce worldviews that, even if only grudgingly, accept casual cruelty and violence at every level of society, and especially convey a sense that this is how it needs to be - and this is how American capital has largely captured the hearts and minds of its citizenry - even those of us unwilling to actually cooperate find ourselves pulled and forcibly immersed in this context that’s reinforced by this kind of media.
This sort of thing, I believe, is why it’s so common, even obligatory, for grimdark “prestige” entertainment to have a redundant message of “this world sucks but attempting to improve it is naive, childish, stupid, and/or wrong and may make this world even worse,” which results in any character in the fiction attempting to improve society somewhat being shown as a fool, an idiot, or just a villain by comparison to the rest of the cast.
Kind of glad honestly I didn’t grow up with the hyper realistic depictions of gore kids see today in games. Back when it was cartoon camp and I think that’s why I enjoyed it. Seeing a zombie head explode in Resident Evil with psx graphics is more cartoonish than high fidelity gore referenced off someone murdered.
No thesis here except it’s complicated, but here’s a bunch of thoughts:
Violence in games in general - There’s way too much of it. The default verb in games is to kill. Child-friendly games that are not considered violent, like Mario, still have the player kill scores of beings. This is not a problem with Mario, or any individual game, but a wider societal problem where violence is seen as the default solution, and problems that can be addressed by violence the default problems. Of last year’s top 20 best selling games, only four didn’t feature violence as a primary problem solving method, and all four of those were sports games (and are Madden and Mario Kart even non-violent?). That’s 80%. Do 80% of all interesting situations involve violence?
Censorship as a response - Is a non-solution. If a state or corporate response is needed, it should be in providing grants to non-violent games until non-violent mechanics are more normalized.
Military shooters - The violence in these is a minor problem compared to the ten layers of rancid ideology atop it.
Ultraviolent games - These are super niche so they’re fine. I mean it’d be completely fucked if 80% of games featured Mortal Kombat levels of gore, but that’s not in danger of happening.
MK fatalities specifically - Yeah someone should go to jail for creating an unsafe work environment. There’s no difference between this and a construction site telling people to go around without hard hats.
Going to take the brave controversial stance that forcing people to look at shocking and disturbing materials shouldn’t be done, especially given you can literally just reference other art like slasher movies and horror paintings
Or do what sound engineers do and just find random things in the world to simulate the gore instead of looking at liveleak lol
basically any gore you want to do they probably already did pretty good in Robocop or Predator or The Boys and you can say you’re doing research while you watch Robocop
philosophically i think it’s weird and bad for a society to prise and detail violence in art, but not strongly enough that it should have legal censure. mortal combat is pretty unique circumstances 99% due to the economic organization not so much the content. fixing someone having to look at gore to keep their job & be fed can be done without catching folks doing gory stuff on their own time for their own enjoyment
I’d file the psychic damage the devs went through under the general category of game companies treating their employees like disposable grist.
I’ll make the more core observation that generally speaking, ultra-realistic ultra violence and good game rarely go together. Things like the early MK games (imma get back to this) and the GTA games were more exceptions to the rule than the rule. Ultra violent games tend to be bad for the same reason porn games are mostly bad; when you’re luring in customers on the shock and titillation, it means that can serve as a substitute for quality gaming.
Like, I’ve been watching some of the high level matches from the most recent EVO, and those are some entertaining matches. The guilty gear strive final was amazing, the third strike final was great, the third strike quarterfinal between Hayao and Frankiebfg was legend tier, Tekken 8 finals were great, same for SF6. And then there was the MK1 finals, which were absolutely dull. And I don’t think it was the competitors’ fault, SonicFox is one of the all-time greats. It’s because the game itself is just not well designed for interesting competitive play. The ultraviolence in modern MK games is definitely a sideshow to distract you from how bland the core gameplay is.
The example of the Mortal Kombat developer really seems more like employee mistreatment rather than a problem with depicting ultra-violence itself. Nobody should be forced to look at gore for their job. Mortal Kombat fatalities are not “realistic” by any stretch anyways, no idea why they felt the need to go the “extra mile” there.
On the consumer end, I would say the context and framing of violence matters much more than the degree of brutality or the detail of its depiction. If I play an RPG Maker game where a pixel guy walks out of frame and then I hear a gunshot followed by the sound of a puppy whimpering, that will impact me much more than seeing Scorpion rip out Sub Zero’s heart and then burn him alive. Or the infamous Fullmetal Alchemist example where the dad fused his dog and his daughter together, not graphic in the slightest but it was and is a genuinely haunting scene. Meanwhile, nobody is actually traumatized by going on a murderous rampage in GTA San Andreas or playing MK9 as a 14-year-old.
No one should be subjected to real life (or fictional) gore if they cannot handle it. For some jobs such as movie/show production, you may not really get a choice in what your participate in because the studio decides based on various reasons. But some more specialized like video games, the studio will usually be known for specific genres or franchises. Like if you apply to Rockstar games, which is already very exclusive and famous, and you become shocked that you have to animate a horse’s head getting blown off, I’m not sure what to tell you.
And, will photo-realistic Fatalities exist in the communist future?
Lol look at current communist history. A lot of it is bloody, and many of its commemorations and memorials involve some of the bloodiest wars against fascists and imperialists. Is Mortal Kombat insulting when placed alongside Come and See? Of course. But I imagine the Soviets would create their own Call of Duty letting players play as Red soldiers gunning down screaming Nazis, and it will be good. Violent media can be introspective, or it can simply reinforce the status quo. Also, much of the world plays violent games too, and they don’t end up psychopathic like American/western/white gamers.
