On violence in games

I was reading up on the media response to the recent GTA IV release and thought some more about violence in games and violence in GTA as well. Now, this is pretty bad considering that I have never played any GTA game so I'll try to keep from saying it is one way or another as I don't really know.

A couple years ago my thoughts on game violence were the same as most gamers and people in the media who don't oppose violent games: That it is separate from real life, not something to give to children, and doesn't affect people's actions. I was subject to other views as well like my father's: That violent imagery in any form should be more restricted, and even games that involve lots of death but have no imagery are to be considered violent and restricted. An example of this would be a turn based strategy game in which large armies kill over domination of territory but all the player sees are tokens, particle effects and minimally interactive avatars representing the armies.

Over time I have developed new views, especially after reading what Tale of Tales has to say and thinking about it. Basically I have decided that imagery and gameplay are separate and not to be confused. A classic example of this would be comparing Quake and Megapixel. They have very similar gameplay but completely different imagery. What is the difference between the games in terms of violence? What is the difference in between destroying virtual abstract shapes and tearing bloody parts off of virtual zombies with a machinegun? I think that basically they are the same game, but quake has a bunch of gore imagery added on top. Tale of Tales explains that games are only as much as their underlying system, and nothing more which I think is similar to what I am saying.

There are some games with violent imagery. What do I think of that? Well, I don't like it. When I played the demo for Prey I was disgusted by it, I didn't want to play it because it seemed so low and ugly. But do I think that it affects people psychologically? I don't know. It seems that its probably not a good idea to make kids look at pictures of people with their legs blown off, but such images don't seem to change people at all, especially in terms of making them more violent. It could even be argued that people should have some level of tolerance for blood so that if they have to help their friend out of the mountains who has a bloody bone jutting out of her broken leg, they won't freak out and be unable to help. But that argument can be reversed to say that people who see imagery of killing will be less reserved when they are in a position to kill someone for whatever reason. I am not really clear on the effect of violent imagery, but I don't like it.

So if video games at their core are nothing more than carefully crafted systems that are fun to interact with just like sports and board games, but with the occasional addition of disgusting imagery, they aren't that bad, right? Thats what I think, but I also think they could be bad if designed differently. Tale of Tales talks about making games that interact with the player on a more meaningful or emotional level, that is their dream and goal, and they are proving that such a thing is possible. An example of this that you can download right now for free is Tale of Tales' Graveyard demo. If you haven't already, I would give it a play and experience what it is like.

So what if there was a duke nukem game that was set up to actually engage the player emotionally and mentally in the content of the action like how The Graveyard does? It is probably impossible, but it would stimulate emotions of hate and violence that would be real. I think the closest thing to this that exists in real life is the *chans, which aren't really a game but work in similar ways. If such games existed, I think they would probably be really bad things.

Now I finally loop back to the beginning: Isn't GTA kind of like what I just described? A violent game that tries to be more than an abstract system by including deep detail and trying to personify all the characters so that the world is believable? I don't know really because I haven't played it, but it seems that way to me just from what I have heard about it.

Just another train of thought dump. Not guaranteed to be grammatical.