GRcade

The Splinter Cell Blacklist video is bad as well - terrorist stabbing simulator.

It depends on the game really. Ninja Gaiden 3 in the Nintendo Conference just seemed tragic that it had to resort to all the blood whereas the violence in The Last of Us is a necessity as it tells the story of just how far people will go to survive and protect the ones they love in the vein of The Walking Dead or Ico.

That scene in The Last of Us can be played without killing anyone, dishonoured can also be played without killing a single person. He should focus on the FPSs rather than a survival game that lets you avoid those situations if you want.

satriales wrote:That scene in The Last of Us can be played without killing anyone, dishonoured can also be played without killing a single person. He should focus on the FPSs rather than a survival game that lets you avoid those situations if you want.

I think the point is that this is what the studios choose to show us. This is the face of gaming in some ways, and its been partially blown off by a shotgun.

Anyway, about that blog of mine - http://videogamesatemybaby.wordpress.co ... -the-face/

To much violence for me. Just gives the impression that there's a lack of innovation and it's worrying when you consider this is what the market wants. Society is becoming to desensitized to violence anyway. How the hell else can you explain why people can look at videos of Syrian children being slaughtered and then do nothing but turn on a video game and massacre people virtually in brutal fashion.

Some times I think I'm turning into my Dad but it's an area which deserves debate from within gaming communities themselves.

I'm sort of disturbed that almost every other game on show features a white man gunning down hordes of brown people. Usually I dismiss overeactions about the ramifications of violence in games but it seems hard to ignore that a whole ethnic group are now the standard cannon fodder.

satriales wrote:He should focus on the FPSs rather than a survival game that lets you avoid those situations if you want.

Because god forbid someone tries to make a game that isn't yet another FPS CoD/Battlefield/Halo clone that just has you shooting everything in sight.

Lets be honest a lot of these games are primarily marketed at people who think Team America and Red Dawn are documentaries.

PCCD wrote:Team America

Now there's a film I want making into a game

Lagamorph wrote:

PCCD wrote:Team America

Now there's a film I want making into a game

Holy gooseberry fool, that would be awesome. strawberry float yeah!

Violence in video games? Well I never.

1cmanny1 wrote:Violence in video games? Well I never.

You could look at it that way. A lot of people do. I just thought that the sheer concentration of throat stabbins and face smashins was a bit much this year, like they'd run out things to make their games unique.

You'd have to watch it over and over on slo-mo to see a "volcano of hyper detailed gore" because it cuts to the title before you can properly see the results of the blast. Bit of an exaggeration, really.

But yeah, a kind of numbing level of extreme violence this year. The Last of Us felt different because it was uncomfortable, a desperate sense of struggle in an intense, nightmarish situation where good people have to resort to bad things. It seemed far more gratuitous elsewhere.

And yeah, the cheering and applause was for the end of one of the best stage demos of E3.

Tafdolphin wrote:

1cmanny1 wrote:Violence in video games? Well I never.

You could look at it that way. A lot of people do. I just thought that the sheer concentration of throat stabbins and face smashins was a bit much this year, like they'd run out things to make their games unique.

I don't think it was different to any other year. Usually the story of the game is built around violence, (assassins, zombies, alien invaders etc) so of course the demos will have violence in them. Why would they leave out a key element of the game? It is not like they can show a lot of the story, that would spoil the finished product.

suzzopher wrote:One of the things with Uncharted that always bothered me, was that we are given this cheeky lead character who is extremely well written for cutscenes, yet as you play he becomes a homicidal maniac It really breaks the illusion being built by the gaming narrative, when you get control as the player and the only way to proceed the story is kill everyone in the room.

I know that makes sense, but I just don't see it that way as I'm playing the game. Shooting things to make them die has always been a part of video games from way back when I started playing them, in Battle Tanks and Asteroids, and has always been a major tool for progression ever since. But that's all I see it as. When I'm playing the game, I'm not causing Drake to murder people, I'm simply removing obstructions in order to progress, because that's how games work. The fact that these things are people means that in order to remove them, the easy thing is to just have them die when shot.

But then, at the end of Uncharted 2, that bald Russian actually says "How many people have you killed? Hundreds? Thousands?" or something to that effect, and then I agree, that made it feel weird. Drake, as a character, is not a mass-murdering monster, but it would be difficult for the game to be what it is without that level of dead enemies. Remove that, and you're basically left with a fairly basic platformer. My problem, however, was with that line of dialogue, not that I had as Drake, killed a bunch of people. I wasn't killing people, I was removing obstacles to progression. Then the game turns round and tells my character he's a monster for playing the game as intended? Bad writing choice, that just draws attention to the gulf between trying to write a likeable character, and then placing them in a combat oriented action game. Any game like that essentially requires your protagonist to be a genocidal maniac, but nobody wants to be that, and most people won't think about that as they play.

Ultimately though, if the game is going to call you a monster for killing all the people it puts in front of you and tells you to kill, it should at least give you a choice.

Each death in Uncharted is not an event. They're not intended to be. They're fairly run of the mill, and by the time you finish, they're nothing of note at all, and as such, form no part in my judgement of the character. Whereas set piece killings, like in that Last of Us trailer, are an event. You feel like these should be shaping a character, as they're supposed to be key pieces of the game, presumably. The only time this would become a problem, would be if you were dealing with the same number of enemies as you had in Uncharted, and were blowing all of their heads apart at close range whilst they screamed "please, don't!" That's sadistic. Uncharted's enemies didn't plead for their life, they taunted you, and shouted to one another about how they were going to get you. They weren't given much in the way of a human dynamic. I've not seen the Watch Dogs clip that's been mentioned, but again, it sounds like it's supposed to be an emotionally charged event, again, not just cannon fodder, and hopefully, will be significant within the game.

Fargo wrote:Society is becoming to desensitized to violence anyway. How the hell else can you explain why people can look at videos of Syrian children being slaughtered and then do nothing but turn on a video game and massacre people virtually in brutal fashion.

Because the video game is fake. It has nothing to do with the real world. Fantasy violence and real life footage of the victims of atrocities like that cannot be equated at all. As I explained above, a lot of violence and killing in games is simply a mechanic. Yes, the mechanics have become much more graphic over time, and there is a certain trend of new games trying to out-do what came before with pushing the envelope, and being more "hyper-viscereal 10/10", but it is always fake, and safe, and people are fine with that. I enjoy violent games, I think they're delightfully silly at times with some of the things they do. The same with violent movies, even books. Hell, even a lot of the music I listen to has some incredibly violent lyrics. Am I desensitised to actual real world violence, because of this? I wouldn't think so. I saw that Syrian video in Off Topic, and very swiftly had to switch it off. The images are still firmly present in my mind right now. But am I going to let those thoughts and images occupy my mind constantly? No. I will still return to my regular life and go back to consuming the media I enjoy consuming, even if that does contain violence, and it won't make me feel bad, because I know it's different. It isn't the real thing. Its fake blood, it's happening to a character that does not exist, in a 2D format, that I'm in complete control of.

Some good points from Knoyleo. And having watched the trailer, as Rudderless mentions, it's not nearly as bad as it was made out....just appeared a pretty normal, bog standard bit of videogame violence.
That's not to say i don't think that the level of violence in games in general is getting a bit dull, but then again it has always been there.... it's just looking more and more realistic, and devs/publishers tend to highlight it as they're still in the mindset of generating a bit of controversy to get people's attention.
if you think back to the furore over the likes of Mortal Kombat and Carmageddon etc they were going to ruin us all, but if you look back at those games now they probably seem less real than the violence in Tom and Jerry!