Life is more violent than any game. Lets make these games more real not less.

I'm not certain if your purpose in doing this is to education or titillate.

The gaming industry already has a significant number of developers who are very very pleased to present realistic, life-like gore. If you read the gaming magazines you will find games that highlight as game features realistic physics, blood spatters, the ability to selectively shoot off an enemies limbs...Hell, they are differentiating themselves in the marketplace by exulting in their gory realism. Adding more realistic gore won't have much of an impact...might even make it more popular in certain circles.

The key problem with some video games is not the violence or the realism but that often you have no options except violence. You are on a linear path. Most games take a singular approach to all problems - shoot them.

The old expression - "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" - applies quite well to video games.

Video games are an immersive technology - they can create the illusion of control and choice but wihtin a highly limited framework. They are also, due to the fact that they are essentially "a game", a fiction - they permit the player to exist in a moral vacuum, to take actions without care or consequence. If you were playing Grand Theft Auto and found out that if you committed a virtual murder and were apprehended by the cops, the game would stop working for 5 years (effectively "jailing" you for the duration), you might be more cautious about who you shoot. Consequences matter.

Violence is such an integral part of video games and video game culture that I'm not sure you could provide any imapct by upping the gore level. I tried out the new version of Doom several weeks ago and ten seconds after I was issued with a weapon, I tried to shoot the armorery officer. Luckily the designers had foreseen this and had placed him behind bulletproof glass but not five minutes later, after wandering through the bowels of the complex, I popped some woeful technician in the head for the express purpose of seeing how the game handled it.

Murder? Boredom? Curiosity? or Exploration of a world where your ability to act is resticted and channeled into specific behaviors, while removing the consequences?

The best games develop a plot, a character and a purpose that goes beyond "run and gun". Realistic violence or not, what is lacking is realistic consequences that impact on the game experience.

Flip flopper.

The gaming industry already has a significant number of developers who are very very pleased to present realistic, life-like gore

Of course, but it's generally against a small number of polygon models. You're shooting the same enemy/monster/guy/soldier a few hundred times. That's part of the problem, and something next generation developers can change.

Video games are an immersive technology - they can create the illusion of control and choice but wihtin a highly limited framework.

I think that framework is neccesary. If it's not, then they developers have no control over what you do. They create the story, they're the ones that can make that emotional impact work.

If you were playing Grand Theft Auto and found out that if you committed a virtual murder and were apprehended by the cops, the game would stop working for 5 years... you might be more cautious about who you shoot. Consequences matter.

That's a damn good point.

Violence is such an integral part of video games and video game culture that I'm not sure you could provide any imapct by upping the gore level.

I disagree completely (obviously). Lets use the Saving Private Ryan example. I've played games for 20 years, and while the current gen is really the one to hammer the point home, there was still plenty of decapatations and such in Mortal Kombat. When I saw Private Ryan, even after seeing various war films before this, I was stunned. It was too real, and it was because of that violence (the guy walking around the beach looking for his arm which just blew off is something I'll never forget).

Most of the developers who showcase gore in their ads or on the box do so because it sells. They care little about making it matter. The guys who made Men of Valor did, they simply screwed it up. Something like this could, nay, will work when it's done properly. There were a few moments where it still hits pretty hard. It just depends on what surrounds that gore and the world you're in.

Doom will never be able to do this. Shooting fantasty monsters obviously doesn't do much, regardless of how gory it is. It's not just the gore, you're right. It's how it's utilized, but it does need to be as brutal as possible, which brings me back to Saving Private Ryan.

Flip flopper.


How so?

The other aspect is that my feeling is that you tend to outgrow video game violence. Let's face it, there is only so many times you can shotgun some thug before it gets dull.

I find I don't have very much interest in playing first-person shooters anymore (despite the gorgeous graphics in Doom, I just wan't interested enough in "killin' stuff" to fork out $40...). A game requires plot, strategy and some other intriguing aspect to make me sit up and take notice.

I've never been much for gore violence, but I've always enjoyed collateral mayhem (blowing up buildings, causing havoc to a city, etc...) for some reason and I think the current gen does it pretty well.