Violence in games and violent games

[isleepinabed]

In the past couple of years I've started to feel less and less at ease playing violent games. I don't know if this recent feeling is because of the ongoing wars. While I have played many violent games in the past I don't even feel it's cathartic, anymore.

As I was thinking about this, I remember in the past having similar thoughts towards specific games. When I had a PS3 a friend urged me to play Uncharted. To be honest I was shocked at how jarring the contrast was between this happy go lucky main character that's half Indiana Jones half Lara Croft but mows down bad guys with a machine gun pumping out thousands of bullets. It felt ridiculous the amount of bullets some enemies took. Stranglehold was another I remember that it was just insane how much lead you were shooting.
The GTA V PC version with the first person viewpoint I also thought was too much.

Last year I played a few games from the Metal Slug series. While the series is endearing because it's so well animated and the set pieces are really good, the militaristic setting with human-like characters seemed way too violent (perhaps more jarring in contrast with the humourous depiction): the knifing of enemies in close combat felt particularly gruesome.

Beat'em ups or fighting games also have this feeling for me. It's too much, too much action, the constant hitting desensitizing the context.

Then, I think the problem is when violence is ininterrupted and without sufficient gravity. For instance, regarding the Uncharted anecdote above, compare Max Payne, when the enemies were actually unpredictable but died with a statement. It was ugly but it transmitted a feeling of "this is hell, and this is how it is here".
Another series I recall that progressively became worse is Far Cry. Far Cry 2 was at a time, among my top 10 favourites. A very important point about it was that you were always vulnerable, be it the malaria episodes, the jamming weapons, being caught downwind of a forest fire or an animal defending its territory. Far Cry 3 and 5, which are the other two games in the series I played extensively had you pratically becoming a superman, killing machine with no real impact.

At the same time, I seem to digest violence better in non-human or non-realistic environments, like in shmups. Maybe the colourful unrealistic bullets, the fact they're (usually) spaceships and aliens without real "death animations" or anything else gives it a context that is "violent" but not shockingly violent.

Have you ever felt like not playing violent games anymore?
Or that a particular videogame was particularly violent for your own taste?
Are you opposed to letting your children play violent games?

 

[Colif]

I might be strange, I don't like games where I have to kill humans but I play games like Diablo and ARPG like it, and I don't know how many things I have killed in them. Most of the enemies in those games aren't human. I don't really think about it, as you don't get far in those games without killing something.

A lot of games I play don't include killing anything.

I don't play first person shooters, which is likely where you meet most humanoids.
I didn't get into GTA at all. I don't like crime games. I don't need the hassle. reminds me I used to like Need For Speed until it degenerated into cop chases.

Far Cry... I know someone who would have an opinion on that... I can't ask him to post though. He wouldn't answer, even if I could ask. Anyway... looks around..

 

[ZedClampet]

WARNING: I spoil everything about Far Cry 4 in the next paragraph.

(edited out all the spoilers) Far Cry 4 is a game that sort of examines some of this. It comes very close at the end to breaking the 4th wall when Pagan talks about what you've been doing. It handles moral ambiguity better than any game I've played and the player actually has more chances to avoid violence than most players realized at the time. For instance, you are given an out immediately once the game starts. It's by far my favorite Far Cry game and probably one of my favorite games period. I have no idea what the main character not being overly vulnerable has to do with anything. Would you prefer to be murdered by a weak person or a strong one? I couldn't care less if the result of both is my murder.

Overall, though, video game violence doesn't bother me at all. I very much have a "it's just a game" mentality and was laughing as I pushed a cart of orphans into a meat grinder in Outlast Trials.

Normally I don't play a lot of games with violence in them anyway, but on the rare occasions that I do play them, I don't care about the violence. The reason I don't usually play these games is because I don't find them mentally stimulating.

In some games, like Factorio and Satisfactory, you have the option to play in peaceful mode, and I usually take that route.

Oh, and I should add that I almost never get immersed in violent games. They are just too far from my real life self.

 

[BeardyHat]

Overall, though, video game violence doesn't bother me at all. I very much have a "it's just a game" mentality and was laughing as I pushed a cart of orphans into a meat grinder in Outlast Trials.

I have this same mentality. Violence in games does not bother me in the least and it's always something separate from reality.

As for letting my kids play violent games? Yeah, I do. Though what's the line here? I don't let them play Grand Theft Auto, but they do play 1943, Minecraft (where they sometimes harass and kill villagers/animals) and by far the worst, Boomerang Fu, where my youngest gets so mad and starts screaming whenever they get killed. In fact, this caused me to ban this game in our house just yesterday. Also, they can play Mechwarrior 5 until their heart's content, as really the worst thing in that is the language and they hear their Mom & Dad swearing constantly, so MW5 is pretty tame by comparison.

I've even allowed them to watch me playing more violent, adult oriented games, such as Lies of P and even Just Cause 3. Lies of P isn't much of an issue--fighting monsters and scary creatures, generally--but in something more "realistic" like Just Cause, we usually end-up having a chat about real violence and how it actually affects people, as well as how we live in a culture of guns and how guns can be neat, but they're also very dangerous and people are killed by them every day. At any rate, they're more interested in the vehicles and silly antics that can be done in JC3, rather than the violence.

 

[ZedClampet]

I have this same mentality. Violence in games does not bother me in the least and it's always something separate from reality.

As for letting my kids play violent games? Yeah, I do. Though what's the line here? I don't let them play Grand Theft Auto, but they do play 1943, Minecraft (where they sometimes harass and kill villagers/animals) and by far the worst, Boomerang Fu, where my youngest gets so mad and starts screaming whenever they get killed. In fact, this caused me to ban this game in our house just yesterday. Also, they can play Mechwarrior 5 until their heart's content, as really the worst thing in that is the language and they hear their Mom & Dad swearing constantly, so MW5 is pretty tame by comparison.

I've even allowed them to watch me playing more violent, adult oriented games, such as Lies of P and even Just Cause 3. Lies of P isn't much of an issue--fighting monsters and scary creatures, generally--but in something more "realistic" like Just Cause, we usually end-up having a chat about real violence and how it actually affects people, as well as how we live in a culture of guns and how guns can be neat, but they're also very dangerous and people are killed by them every day. At any rate, they're more interested in the vehicles and silly antics that can be done in JC3, rather than the violence.

I also let my kids play pretty much whatever they wanted. I was far more concerned about them interacting with other players and basically never let them do that.

 

[DXCHASE]

Have you ever felt like not playing violent games anymore?
Or that a particular videogame was particularly violent for your own taste?
Are you opposed to letting your children play violent games?

1.-No
2.-No
3.-No

Beat'em ups or fighting games also have this feeling for me. It's too much, too much action, the constant hitting desensitizing the context.

One of my favorite games when i was a kid was Mortal Kombat haha , and it was mainly because you could do fatalities and you couldn't do that in Street Fighter or King of Fighters games and wasn't some super hidden gem like in Killer Instinct, which i was also playing at the time. Granted, i liked fighting games, but they have never been a genre that i live in. I played all types back then.

I never felt it was "too violent" because i always knew it was a game and that doing that stuff wasnt real. I was able to differentiate that and i can wholly understand where people couldnt nowadays.

I got in trouble in school one time because i was drawing Baraka from MK and since i have terrible drawing skills, a student thought i was drawing something gross and told on me lol.



Nowadays, in my cycle, im like @ZedClampet , what i kill in my games arent human and are threats to humanity that must be destroyed. In Helldivers 2, i kill bugs, bots and aliens that are trying to get rid of humans, so the violence there isnt terrible to me, same goes for Diablo 4. Killing hell's demons isnt a bad task, so i dont see these games as too violent.

As for kids, my son has had freedom of choice to play whatever he wants his whole life. While mine was/has been filled with Dooms, Call of Duty's, Destiny and Mortal Kombat games, my son mainly plays Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite and now Marvel Rivals (Less violent/non-violent games) when hes not playing Helldivers 2 or some game with us.

I do like playing games that have no violence, dont get me wrong, ill get an itch to build some cities, play some cards or skate or something but even if most of my time is spent in games that i guess are "violent", ive had none of the stereotypical feedback you hear about someone who plays violent video games all the time, not even in the slightest.

P.S.
My avatar pic is from Mortal Kombat lol

 

[Zloth]

The violence doesn't really get to me, except in one unique instance. That said, I do like it a lot when games give me something other than combat to have fun with. I played 127 hours of Distant Worlds 2 and never once fired a shot at another faction, just unthinking monsters. I don't do a lot of fighting in X4, either - I leave the bulk of the fighting to my defense stations.

The one unique instance was with Phantasmagoria. One you-lose scene was pretty shocking when I first saw it. But then I kept failing, over and over, because I didn't have that one special item I needed to win the game. The shocking became a bit silly and very obviously fake after watching it a few times. But, after watching it over a dozen'ish times (I really thought I could win with what I had), it really started making me uncomfortable. I started looking away to avoid watching the scene. It's weird that that didn't happen until after the scene got fake looking, but that's how it worked out.

So yeah - no problems except in Point & Click adventures. <shrug>

 

[Pifanjr]

I don't have issues with violence necessarily, but it can be uncomfortable depending on the context.

Most video games don't take violence seriously. It's either made to look less serious than real life or intentionally made more gruesome. Even when a game tries to make it realistic, the enemies you fight are typically unequivocally evil and entirely generic.

The two exceptions that come to mind are Spec Ops: The Line and the Dark Urge in Baldur's Gate 3. In the former, especially the part where you are confronted with the consequences of using white phosphorus certainly had an impact on me. With the latter, it was the part where you kill an innocent person who had asked you for help.

Especially with the example for Baldur's Gate 3, at least that one act is unequivocally evil. There is a reason why I never pick the evil path in a RPG, it just feel uncomfortable for me.

Basically, it feels bad if I cannot dehumanise the NPCs I'm committing violence against.

 

[Alm]

I think the only game I play that has me feeling mildly uncomfortable is GTA. Saying that, I used to flinch just before shooting at people on Counter Strike and had to train myself out of it.

 

[January's Ghost]

Have you ever felt like not playing violent games anymore?
Or that a particular videogame was particularly violent for your own taste?
Are you opposed to letting your children play violent games?

No, yes, and no.

I do feel the need for a change of pace from the mostly violent action games I play though, and they are my number one style I play. It's kinda of a bummer because my brain adores the feedback loop they create with their constant action. Still, I do get tired of them, and kinda gaming in general, and want to kick back with a simple puzzle game or an artsy style adventure.

I am not a fan of the gratuitous gore of the Mortal Kombat franchise, which is okay because I can't play them anyway because my hands and wrists start hurting not long after I start playing.

When my kids started showing an interest in playing games I let them play what the wanted. While I wasn't worried about any negative effects we kept a lookout, but both my kids are so damn chill (then and now) I really had no worries.

 

[Colif]

My avatar pic is from Mortal Kombat lol

One less mystery

 

[Rataplan]

The only time i was a little bit shocked was when as a kid i first saw this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxfhTKP3lz4


I gues at the time i didn't expect things to become that violent but i never really thought about violence in games. I used to watch a lot of martial arts films as a kid and films are just the same. You don't have to watch them. You can watch or play enough that isn't violent.

 

[Zloth]

Mortal Kombat seems more like shock violence to me. It's not so much about the violence per se, it's the fact that they dare DO such a thing! It feels more like a form of rebellion. Ain't gonna see THAT on TV, not even on HBO!