The Medium is the Message, Not the Opposite: Violence in Video Games

“Violence is inherent in the medium, inseparable from the essential experience of playing games. Without competition and conflict resolved by violence, games wouldn’t be games: they’d be screensavers.” – Joe McNeilly, “2008: A Year to Dismember,” Gamesradar.com

To anyone who plays games on a regular basis, it is absolutely clear that there is no shortage of violence in video games. Often though, that violence is labeled as an integral part to the experience of gaming. Video games, to too many people, are equated with violence.

As a player whom many of my favorite games include no trace of violence, I take personal exception to this. To reduce the medium to such a base component is to do it an injustice. Many meaningful movies, for instance, have violence, but the violence is not showcased. Maybe this is another example of game development, in a misinformed fashion, mimicking the Hollywood machine. It seems that many developers choose to label their products as action games, if only because they exhibit a lack of horror, drama, or any other genre’s element in them (probably because they have no story to sustain any of these elements). An “action game” might as well be synonymous with “video game” for the average consumer, and from that it is not difficult to see how video games invite violence.

It takes an agency outside of simply consuming to see games for what they can, and should be: engaging entertainment. This lens does not necessitate violence.

If engaging film and literature can be created about the difficulties of the mundane, why can’t the same be said for videogames? Is that not what art is? What the industry strives for? Games, ones that aspire to be art, should aspire to teach about life. Real, regular life. Not space adventure, not treasure hunting, not bringing down colossi.

It just seems such a preposterous idea: waste a near limitless digital canvas, a video game, on the mundane. Or it must seem that way to most gamers, since there is very little in the way of reality-based games. Is it not arrogant of developers, to assume so little of their audience, or so much of their own fiction, that they think nothing of ignoring the real world? A world we, their customers, can all relate to?

The more violent a game becomes, the more it becomes removed from its audiences’ reality. Video game consumers do not gun down monsters, civilians or anything for that matter, in droves in their everyday lives. Nor do they want to, any more than an avid horror fan wants to kill unsuspecting teenagers, or a war film buff would like to be caught in a fire fight. These situations are escapism—limit testing, psychologically—but escapism nonetheless. For the average consumer, they represent nothing of what they would like their lives to be modeled after. For some, a world completely removed from reality is an attractive one, but that world could be one of fantasy, where gravity is skewed and the people are made out of yarn. I think there was something called Little Big Planet that did all right for itself. Not all games are violent, and violence absolutely does not need to be a staple of the industry.

Andrew Przybylski, researcher at the University of Rochester, recently published findings showing that players engage no more or no less with games that are overtly violent when compared to games that are not (you should really read about it). He notes:

“The message for game designers is that their resources are probably better spent designing games that will satisfy the psychological needs of players to feel competent, a feeling of autonomy and being connected to other players.” - Andrew Przybylski, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, University of Rochester

All I can do is contrast this kind of reasonable, forward thinking to that of someone like Joe McNeilly, who says that:

“With Fallout 3’s VATS system, players target specific limbs in a semi-turn-based combat. Add in the Bloody Mess perk, in which limbs spontaneously explode off the body of a vanquished foe, and you have the Game of the Year.” – Joe McNeilly, “2008: A Year to Dismember,” Gamesradar.com

McNeilly is clearly missing the point. For whatever reason, he has actively ignored Fallout 3’s incredible achievements in exploration, storytelling and interaction, and is purporting the assumption that all of the game’s success stems from the fact that the player can dismember his enemies.

McNeilly then launches into a ludicrous diatribe, likening gamers’ alleged hunger for this dismemberment to the division between Right and Left wing politics, global warming, religious wars and the Patriot Act. What? It’s articles like McNeilly’s that lead me to believe that maybe the industry is sabotaging itself.

If we, as video game consumers, believe that there is nothing more than violence and strife in our worlds, real and digital, then that’s all there will ever be.

Some References:

Joe McNeilly, and his thoughts on how much you like to kill when you play, 2008, A Year to Dismember.

Andrew Przybylski, and his idea that people do not lust after blood in their gaming.

Joe Baca, California Congressman, and his proposed labeling for violent viodegames. This is a good one. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

AJ Glasser, editor for Kotaku.com, and her feelings towards videogame violence.