[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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.