Incline Opinions on How Far Violent Gaming Should Go

[KeighnMcDeath]

There are a few older threads (probably far more than I cared to search on) that touched on the violent gaming market.

Gore and Violence in gaming, two recent opinions​

Edgy, violent games (mostly shooters)​

Most violent computer games​

What made me even bother with this thread was a video:


I honestly don't mind violence in gaming. Hell, given some thought any game could be considered violent if you use your imagination. In the end it is just pixels and programming but I'm sure psychologists and media agenda agencies would paint a far different picture the conform with what ever is controlling or gives them headlines to influence who watches or listens or reads their drivel. Opinions and assholes as they say.

I'm also curious which games members actually find meh, bleh, ok, decent, good, or fantastic. Which are modable, which have sequels or possibly sequels in the making, and if the game has a franchise that has stayed great or become rubbish.

Now, I enjoyed the original postal when it came out. As with games that had such wonky fuck controls of the time on the old computer hardware I had you learned to become good, memorize how it played, remember enemy placement, and predict movement and tactics. It was a simple game and I still laugh at the voice acting.

Hatred, I never played but I might purchase; I guess it is still on steam so the workshops might be appealing.

Further back, I enjoyed:
Doom (just about all incarnations)
Duke Nukem 3D
Splatter house 3 (genesis)
Barbarian I
Axe of Rage (barbarian II c64)

And probably a lot more that really have zilch for gore. I mean, I enjoyed using remote missiles in NES Metal Gear exploding everyone or sneaking up on goons and stun punching them to death. You could count the literal sub-seconds in your head before they'd get a chance to sound an alarm.

I suppose pac-man is either an exorcist or just a terrorist bent on power.

Mr. Do is a crazy clown.

Mario is a stoner bent on murder as well in hopes to get some princess cooch but Toadstool makes me think she is a he and the plumber has a mushroom fetish. Maybe he rapes all those toads before murdering them in another castle. Maybe Bowser is protecting the Kingdom.

We'll never know.

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

depends on how it's done. mortal kombat was a lot of fun, modern mortal kombat is retarded and disgusting.

 

[deama]

TL:DR

This two-part video series examines the prevalence and impact of violence in video games. The creator argues that the gaming industry's heavy reliance on violent gameplay is a "bad habit" that limits innovation and storytelling potential. They explore various ways violence is depicted in games and question why it's so central to gameplay mechanics.

Using examples like LA Noire and ancient Greek epics, the videos draw parallels between how violence is romanticized in different media forms. The creator suggests that violent games fulfill a collective need by providing a more satisfying version of conflict than reality offers.

However, the series warns that this artificial representation of violence can skew perceptions of real-world violence, potentially influencing societal attitudes towards warfare and conflict resolution. The creator argues that the common trope of "fair" violence in media might lead people to overestimate its effectiveness as a problem-solving tool.

The series concludes by calling for more critical examination of violence in games, using "Spec Ops: The Line" as an example of a game that challenges typical glorification of war in military shooters.

Super TL:DR

It's a bad habit to rely on violence in games so much.

 

[Lemming42]

I can stand it less and less as I get older. I don't like violence in media in general but, all moral concerns aside, the bigger problem is that the acceptability of violence as both a plot point and a mode of gameplay is massively limiting the medium as a whole. Why bother making complex NPC AI if all the player's gonna do is smash their heads in, why bother coming up with intricate stealth systems when stealth is just a way to get the first shot in, why add detail to the world when the only reason the player goes to a town is to get another quest about killing shit, etc.

We've gotten the tech to make huge open worlds with thousands of NPCs and cities and settlements, and the best thing we can think to do in them is still typically to kill everyone. It's really lame and we need to go off in some new directions. Maybe generative AI will change things.

 

[Fargus]

 

[Hace El Oso]

I’ve seen gore vanish almost entirely from games, film, everything. You’d never see something like this in a film today, or something like this in a game today. People don’t even use scary words and terms in anything that will be put online, including self-c*nsoring text.

Pod people are soft, neutered and docile creatures and anything that might upset them or give them any ideas will be removed for their own good.

 

[AdolfSatan]

I’ve seen gore vanish almost entirely from games, film, everything.

??? If anything, there’s lot of gratuitous gore everywhere. I just came from watching Kinds of Kindness, in which a mutilation scene was depicted in full-view taking up the entire screen.
And I can’t think of any older game having as detailed scenes of gory death as modern games like MK or TR because the technology wasn’t even there.


I find it tacky and unnecessary, they rarely add anything of fun to the gameplay loop or to the storytelling aspects and more often than not feel like a crutch to scrape some sense of adrenaline out of the viewer. Just check at the type of person that basks in creating extreme art: first world edgelords desensitized by their cushy lifestyles like Gaspar Noé and their ilk.

 

[Fargus]

Yup. Hollywood still shits out large quantity of cartoonish gore it's just everything else like showing gratuitous amount of tits, hypermasculinity being a good thing, disrespecting femoids and showing them as weak, rape scenes, hating homos and niggers is a no-no. Because it makes normies upset and they will screech. But mincing someone into salad is ok.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I’ve seen gore vanish almost entirely from games, film, everything.

??? If anything, there’s lot of gratuitous gore everywhere. I just came from watching Kinds of Kindness, in which a mutilation scene was depicted in full-view taking up the entire screen.
And I can’t think of any older game having as detailed scenes of gory death as modern games like MK or TR because the technology wasn’t even there.

I think that it's alive and well in cinema since extreme gore can be a good advertisement for a horror movie and these tend to sell well while also costing much less than the big blockbusters. And besides that, I assume that the ratings and various laws governing the international distribution of video games tend to be much more draconian than those of their film counterparts.

 

[Hace El Oso]

If anything, there’s lot of gratuitous gore everywhere. I just came from watching Kinds of Kindness, in which a mutilation scene was depicted in full-view taking up the entire screen.

I always see people refute this by pointing at things like a torture scene in Game of Thrones or the Red Wedding or somesuch. But the truth is those scenes are a lot further from capturing the reality of the thing (and a lot less fun) than the good old stuff like Robocop, because of CGI and 'film effects' and worse actors that can't step outside their comfortable world for the role.

I will admit that I haven't gone to the cinema in years and years. But I stand by my statement that everything has become at once more gratuitous and more sanitized. That goes for violence, sex and language.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

OP, if you're going to make a poll at least try to not to make all of its options retarded

As for "Violence in Media"
It depends entirely on its intention, its execution and its result

But given the times we live in, most people will not hold sensible opinions on the matter and thus asinine controversies are the order of the day...

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I recall the last few seasons of Supernatural and they seemed to be a big gorefest. Before that I think I only had the first three seasons because I had so many best buy points to scoop up a super sale. Once in a while I watch some TV of old old old shows and the gore wasn't there but there was violence. Hell, a lot of Westerns or detective shows I never saw any blood or bullets hitting the target. I can't change the poll now unless you want me to add non-retarded options.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

to scrape some sense of adrenaline out of the viewer

Which is a completely valid reason to include it, specially if your game is one of intense moments of action
Horror games also benefit from a certain level of brutality to heighten the tension

 

[Falksi]

If this was made with a cast of Nu-Bioware characters, we'd have a pretty perfect game.

 

[Maxie]

I like when a heroic guy shoots the fuck out of evil villains and gets babes/riches/babes&riches. I don't like senseless schizo randomly murdering people who don't mean him harm like Postal or Hatred. I absolutely abhor when some modern type deconstructed pseudo-hero has trials and tribulations over shooting someone who's clearly a villain. I screech and throw poo at games where you talk your way out of conflicts.

 

[karoliner]

I want games to let me shoot people in the balls.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Play the MGS series then

 

[NecroLord]

No KC?

 

[NecroLord]

Soldier of Fortune was perfect.
You can make shooting people genuinely seem and feel extremely painful and unpleasant (Call of Duty: World at War also had this kind of gore and soldiers screaming their souls out while on their death throes).
You do not need to go overboard and into comical and grotesque Garth Ennis-like proportions...

 

[Fargus]

If this was made with a cast of Nu-Bioware characters, we'd have a pretty perfect game.

Definitely.

look at this shit, so much potential if they let us mod the game

Soldier of Fortune was perfect.
You can make shooting people genuinely seem and feel extremely painful and unpleasant (Call of Duty: World at War also had this kind of gore and soldiers screaming their souls out while on their death throes).
You do not need to go overboard and into comical and grotesque Garth Ennis-like proportions...

What a great game. There was probably nothing like it at the time with so many ways to kill enemies. Even though the campaign was meh and short af.

 

[Hell Swarm]

As much as there needs to be.

Seeing a guy's head explode in gears of war is mechanically the same as brutal Doom but one is excessive and annoying while the other is artistic. I don't want Doom guy to be chainsawing demons in half as blood sprays all over him and the two parts fall away like a comedy but in gears of war I do. It's all about presentation and knowing restraint.

 

[Sigourn]

The answer will ALWAYS be "it depends".
I don't mind absurdly violent fatalities in Mortal Kombat, but I think the recurrent gore in normal combat is moronic. You see a guy receiving a spinning blade to the face and then he keeps fighting like nothing just happened, it's retarded.

 

[Poseidon00]

Don't care about it really. The only time it actually detracts from the experience is when it is Mortal Kombat 11 levels of gore, just generally unpleasant to look at and stupidly unrealistic for the sake of it.

 

[NecroLord]

Don't care about it really. The only time it actually detracts from the experience is when it is Mortal Kombat 11 levels of gore, just generally unpleasant to look at and stupidly unrealistic for the sake of it.

Since day 1 Mortal Kombat has been infamous for its gore and violence.
I much preferred the early Mortal Kombat over this modern nu-Mortal Kombat crap. It had a 90s B movie feel to it.