this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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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.