Blood, gore and violence in games

[Adventurer 007]

slasher:  First off let me apologize. It was not my intention to insult.  Re-reading the text I can see how is can be read that way.  I should have rewritten it to state if one were to add the violence to the game as a marketing ploy or just for the sake of it, time would be better spent working on other constructs or finding people to help add to the game.  I did not mean to say that you were without skill or otherwise.

I probably should have prefaced the entire post with a "this is my opinion" as well.

And I wish you well in your game.  Any undertaking is challenging.

=Adventurer 007

[Queen Kara]

I love threads like this. As a wannabe game creator - ( and even if I had zero interest in the game creation process or didn't desire to make any myself... I'd probably still think about some things a lot ) - I often think about violence and other issues that games can and do bring up and even somewhat "cutesy" looking games can be violent and gore-filled. People will put "real things" in the virtual things even where and when it is not really needed nor should it always be included. Rape , for example. As a female - ( and lover of various adult titles / subject matter ) - I get so tired of people who included rape scenarios in their works or worse , centered their story around rape and made it the main theme or thing , make excuses for it , treat it like a joke , ect. Of course , being a woman....I can have mixed feelings about violence towards females in games. Other times I'll think "ok she pretty much deserved that" or even enjoy doing or saying something hurtful to a female character but then I might feel guilty for that kind of thinking because...hey....I'm female too.

I get tired of Nazi crap too but I will play Indiana Jones games , I kinda love IJ , and I sometimes have to put up with fighting nazis or seeing that crap when playing a game because it was part of the game and pretty much usually the point or part of the point of such games.....I have always had mixed feelings about games like doom but they can be kinda fun....it's just really annoying and stupid and sad Nazi ever was - ( and still is with some idiots ) - a thing. And one can easily find it in games , movies , ect.

For me , it's more of "oh , god. nazis AGAIN?!" than "oh this is so very offensive" ...I rarely get offended by it.
But I also do sometimes get tired of it 'cause , hey , I'm German and not a Nazi.
I miiight be one in the sense of "grammer nazi" but I don't like the idea of somebody calling me a grammar nazi.
And I would want to hurt anybody who would consider me a "feminazi". Such a stupid word anyway , those haters came up with.
Feminazi? Pfft.

I hope people think of me as a feminist , not a feminazi. A basically good person that just happens to have strong opinions and ideals. *sighs and rubs forehead*

It all depends on why you want to have it in your game and what exactly you are thinking of throwing in there , your target players , ect.

[Slasher]

Good points Queen Kara.

Feminazi: that's a new one

What I a trying to get across is that whilst most folk are decent, law abiding citizens there are still many people who are not and they delight in robbing, raping and murdering.

Get a group of these death-row undesirables, put them on an island and offer them freedom and a million dollars to whoever remains is a recipe for murder. One could of cause say that for a million dollars some respectable people would turn nasty and join in the murdering. This is human nature at its worst.

That aside, it seems that in a game of this kind it is only natural that dirty deeds will prevail and the player should expect this. In fact the player can revel in seeing them 'bumped off'

The Nazis regime was brutal and should never happen again, but you can't wipe it under the carpet.

[EliasFrost]

I'm personally not very interested in violent just for the sake of violence, especially when the player does it. When I play a character I want the violence to be somewhat relatable, which means that it has to be at the very least justifiable from the perspective of the character I'm playing or if it's a clever way to communicate a certain message, to a certain extent of course. Manhunt 2 for example, you kill because you have to because it's the only way to get out of the situation and that is a level of violence that I don't like even though it is thematically justified, mainly because it makes me feel a bit squeamish. On the other hand, one game that I actually enjoyed the violence was in Thief, mainly because it's entirely optional and it's a way to tell you that you screwed up, so the violence in the game didn't spawn out of the desire to hurt but because you weren't good enough at avoiding violence.

[Galen]

For the most part blood and gore exist as a kinaesthetic element of games, adding more audio-visual feedback that eliminates ambiguity like "Am I damaging the enemy?" and making up for the lack of actual tactile feedback on actions (see also: screen-shake).

But there was has been a trend since the 90s that wanes and then revives itself of excessively violent games. Doom, Mortal Kombat, Manhunt, and so on, are common examples. Sometimes this is done for narrative effect (i.e. Booker Dewitt is not a good person) or to drive in a horrific tone (in gory horror games)... but you do occasionally just get games that seem violent for the sake of it. And honestly, when it comes to gore I really do think that many developers and players are just so used to video games that they simply see it as a cool visual effect than a representation of actual violence and injury. God knows, so many AAA budget games watch like the worst Grindhouse movies.

Poor writing in video games, developers/publishers being uninventive enough to fill their game with some kind of engaging gameplay other than combat of a sort, the effectiveness of drawing on both survival and competitive instincts, the buzzword-marketting hype of every single game having to be 'visceral and edgy', and the effectiveness of gore as a feedback method... all kind of boil down together with a bunch of 20-something male developers whose media consumption habits consist of Game of Thrones, SAW, and the latest Taken movie to form this consistant baseline of 'games being about violence' and then frequent fad periods of a bit of the old ultra-violence rearing its head.

Thankfully I think the slew of games where the violence feels out of place may eventually cause a shift towards other styles of gameplay. Although they're terrible examples of non-violent games, I'd still point to the latest Telltale games, as well as the likes of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, as as examples of very successful games where the primary interaction with the gameworld isn't graphic violence.

Right now I think I'm mainly just bothered by 'grr angry' revenge stories (Watchdogs, Shadows of Mordor, etc, etc). Really boils the games down to "this is a game about murdering stuff, please murder stuff". Other than those, there's generally only a few outliers when it comes to games where the violence and gore is truly arbitrary and generally they're not good games.

[Dualnames]

Meanwhile, hotline miami 2 is out. Why is that not bashed yet? Oh wait, everyone loved the first one.

[Armageddon]

Meanwhile, hotline miami 2 is out. Why is that not bashed yet? Oh wait, everyone loved the first one.

Damn you for getting my hopes up! Hotline Miami 2 isn't out yet. I wish they hadn't removed the rape scene from Hotline Miami 2, if Irreversible can do it why not Hotline?

I've never had a problem with violence in games if it's in the right context. Like Hatred was just violence for the sake of it, same with the Postal games. That's all the games have to offer. Hotline has a lot of challenge, and it's the characters job to kill people, so there's some context. Also the people you kill mostly turn out to be not great, and it has quite a heavy handed commentary on how awful the player is for enjoying violence. Why do you want people to bash it Dualnames? The first one was probably my favorite game in a decade. It's just everything I want from a game.

[Galen]

Nothing got removed, Armageddon. There's an option that trims down the scene but it is still there. It is even uploaded in full to Devolver Digital's Youtube channel. It also isn't exactly as it sounds, in the sense that:

Spoiler

It is revealed immediately afterwards to be a scene in a film. So while it is a depiction of rape, it is fictional within the universe of the game.

[close]

[Jay Tholen]

This is likely mirroring what everyone else said - but I've become quite averse to games that push gory, bloody, violent angles in their marketing. 12 year old me wanted all the gore I could get. My favorite screensaver was that Duke Nukem 3D body-parts-piling-up thing. Blood shooting everywhere was often implemented before any actual gameplay in my old Klik & Play games.

I'm not really morally opposed to it, it's just lost its draw for me. It's old. It doesn't feel edgy or exciting or fresh anymore. I also don't think it helps the reputation of video games in the public eye. They're still seen as toys for teenage boys, and I think excessive violence shares some blame in that.

That said, I did dig Hotline Miami's subversive tone. I don't think the message would've been as effective had the gore been toned down.

[Dualnames]

I absolutely love and envy Hotline Miami, my comment was sarcastic.