Violence Hurting Video Games?!

Now here’s a subject that gets beat to death (pun intended). We hear about this from angry parents, the media, and certain disbarred Florida attorneys (looking at you Mr. Thompson). What about the gamers? How do the people who play the games feel about the violence in video games? Well, let’s see.

I talked to a few of my fellow gamers while writing this article, in order to attain an understanding of what the majority thinks. What I found is that it ranges from them being fine with it, to downright loving the blood and guts. No one seemed to be bothered by it at all, and why should they be? I wouldn’t consider gore or violence in games to be a problem either. I’d be willing to bet that 95% (if not more) of the people on the news who complain that violence is a serious problem in today’s gaming, are not gamers. These people are on the outside looking in, and therefore see things differently. This translates into other cultures as well. When two people from France greet each other by a kiss on each cheek regardless of what gender they are or what their sexual preference is, we as people from another culture look at this as being a bit strange. Do the people in France consider this strange? No, it’s just how they greet one another. There are a seemingly infinite number of examples of these, just think for a few minutes and you are bound to find an ample amount of your own examples.

Now I will admit some games do go a little overboard with the blood and guts (Nanobreaker for example), to the point of it being downright distracting. In my personal opinion, if the violence adds realism to the game, then that’s great. Isn’t that what most developers are attempting to do? Aren’t today’s video games about being as realistic as possible? Blood and violence are a part of reality, are they not? If someone shoots me in the head with a shotgun from about a foot away, there’s probably going to be a bit of a mess to clean up afterwards. Violence is reality; all you have to do is watch those same news shows that criticize gaming to see that. War is real, gang violence is real, rape is real, etc. So if developers want to release a game that realistically portrays the world that we live in, wouldn’t some of these things need to be present? So in that respect a certain realistic amount of gore and violence makes perfect sense to me.

What about you guys? Feel free to post a comment detailing how you feel about all this. Is there too much? Is there too little?

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