A left case against ultra-violence in video games (or at least MK fatalities)?

I think some ultraviolence in video games is okay when it's presented as a bad thing. Hotline Miami comes to mind where it forces the player to look at what they've done and reflect on it. It turns the adrenaline pumping action sequences into horror as you realize you and your character are not right in the head. You're forced to quietly reflect as you exit the building past dead and mutilated bodies.

One of the problems I've had with modern games is how much they normalize the military. It's no secret the DoD and CIA have their hands in video games. They can use unrealistic violence as a recruiting method. Players get used to the idea of blowing up Arabs with goofy ragdoll physics, completely isolating them from the violence inflicted in the real world.

Saving Private Ryan caused military recruitment to drop and it never recovered, even after 9/11. The powers that be realized they dropped the ball but were saved by pivoting to video games. A game with Come and See, Saving Private Ryan, or Schindler's List levels of realistic violence could potentially turn people off to war as a game. This has never been done as far as I'm aware.

I'm going to out myself as somewhat of a contrarian here and say that most of the violence in videogames is bad. While drawing straight lines from media violence to real-life violence is basically impossible and ridiculous, I find it just as ridiculous to say that media representations of the world do not have any impact on the real world. And the fact that this newest medium that is videogames finds most of its interactivity in violence just seems plain not good to me.

There are reasons for it obviously, two of which are wonderfully laid out in these two videos, one of which tries to explain the prevalence of violence in games , basically arguing that violence has become so deeply ingrained in game design since it provides obvious win/lose-states, and this other one which tries to explain the prevalence of shooters in post-3d gaming, arguing that shooters best solve the issue of camera control in games by turning the camera into the main way of interacting with the game world (it is of course no coincidence that videogame controllers are used extensively in military applications).

This is of course not an indictment of the medium of videogames in themselves, but an indictment of the industry which has put profit over any sort of artistic intent probably more than any other media industry ever has. There is little to no incentive to try to make games with less or no violence - even games like stardew valley can't help but feature some sort of combat - when violence works. And it seems to work so well that videogames feature magnitudes more violence than any other medium.

The french director Truffaut famously said something along the lines of: "You can't make an anti-war film, because war will inevitably look exciting up on the screen." If there is a truth to this for movies, to me it seems almost undoubtedly true for games. Naughty Dog gave us the perfect example for it: The Last of Us 2. Created as both a response to the complaints of "ludonarrative dissonance" that were lobbed at Uncharted (this is conjecture on my part) and self-admittedly by the games director Neil Druckmann as a response to the 2000 Ramallah lynching. It's this stupid fucking "cycle of violence and revenge" bullshit story that only a zionist could write, but that's not really important for my argument.

TLOU2 is probably one of the most expensive, most prestigious games ever made, the absolute spearhead of "cinematic storytelling" in videogames, while also being one of the few to try to have an "important" real-life message. It's an incredibly brutal game, both the actions of the player and the non-player characters are incredibly violent and rendered in vivid detail (the devs here did also look at footage of mutilated humans for inspiration), presumably because the story they wanted to tell to them necessitated that level violence. As an interactive prestige videogame however, they also made sure that that violence is as satisfying and engaging as possible. The controls are as tight, the camera moves as smooth around the gameworld as it possibly could, there are no cuts when you go for an execution-style finisher, you can upgrade your weapons by scavenging for parts, there's a skill-tree, you can go into new game plus and keep your upgrades, etc. It's all designed to be as engaging and "fun" as possible. So is the extreme violence actually there to tell a story or to be satisfying and fun?

It's very obviously the latter and the devs couldn't be more upfront about it, since in January they released the remastered version of this game, which includes a roguelike mode, in which you battle against human and zombies in a classic horde mode. The same fucking violence, the same mechanics that were just previously there to tell a dark gritty and "important" story about revenge and israel and palestine are now there for you to enjoy in perpetuity. Violence all the fucking time, for your amusement again and again and with no end. The fact that they released it during the ongoing genocide in gaza is a genuine indictment for the videogame industry and community as a whole.

This came to mind after I was reading about the video game designer who developed PTSD after working on Mortal Kombat 11. His dreams became excruciatingly violent, and his day-to-day was interacting with coworkers studying medical anatomy and watching videos of slaughtered animals.

This is totally off tangent and I feel for this guy but he really shouldn’t have done this. I worked in VFX for several years (which is what radicalized me) and for most of those years I was the resident gore guy on some movies and TV shows you’ve probably seen. I learned very early on that medical photos and footage of real human wounds and sketchy website videos of slaughtered animals are not only mentally corrosive to look and morally questionable take make art out of, they’re also dog shit quality as photo references almost uniformly.

But you know what looks just like the skin on someone’s scalp cracking open from blunt trauma? A pumpkin after it’s been dropped. Wanna know what looks like skin sloughing off a face that’s been doused in acid? A delicious pizza losing its melty cheese. Wanna know what looks like a hideous boil the size of a baseball oozing pus? A freshly cut chocolate lava cake with it’s caramel dripping out. There is an endless supply and variety of food stock photography available cheaply online. I actually don’t know if this is standard practice, but it definitely should be.

Obviously, traumatizing your workers should be a crime. That being said, I think abhorring violence is liberalism tbh. It isn't the violence of the video games that is an issue, it is the culture around the violence. If you can shoot a gun in a game, it's a big difference if that gun is aimed at a Nazi vs a 'jihadi militant' or whatever racist shit COD is about.

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depends on the violence and depends on the game, blanket statements about 'what subjects belongs in media' are ill-considered. for example, i would say that call of duty is 'worse' than something like Halo, since it is more engaged with the american cultural context of imperialism and glorification of imperialist militaries, whereas halo is essentially the same aesthetically as a child banging plastic sci fi aliens and spacemen together going 'pew pew', even if it does have an element of jingoistic NATO realism in its plot.

Games are also at a weird intersection of Fiction and Sport and Technology, the story in Halo is essentially filler to justify the Fun Jumping and Shooting, the fun jumping and shooting is only there to justify the Xbox Hardware, and the contrivance of it even being a Shooting game is a result of the common control surfaces in gaming (another poster mentioned FPS as a solution to camera control), and the fact that doing 'sports' on a screen is necessarily less engaging than real life, necessitating some kind of narrative 'stakes' that make the on-screen activities seem Important and Momentous and Meaningful - and yanking the in-game stakes up to (virtual) Life or Death instead of just 'Win or Lose A Game' is a convenient way to accomplish this.

definitely agree that a major game corporation forcing employees to look at gore as a condition of employment is fucked up, but at the same time i don't think like, a solo indie dev that chooses to do that to themselves while making a free game should be criticized or penalized in the same way.

also in general we should base decisions like this on like, tangible empirical material studies, instead of trying to derive media policy from first principles. for example its possible that 'violent games made under western neoliberal capitalism' are bad, and that 'violent games made under worldwide communism' are not bad, due to all kinds of hard to quantify cultural factors, there are far too many variables to isolate to flat out say 'all violence in video games makes you a worse person', based purely on one's personal anecdotes, that is an absolutely unhinged take

The studies we've done on violent media seem to fall along the same lines as other studies. The short and simplified version is: media is really bad at influencing behavior but its really good at influencing viewpoints and perspectives. In this sense: violent media doesn't make you more prone to do violence...but it can change how you perceive violence. That fact is especially problematic and complicated when you consider things like Call of Duty which ultimately serve to glorify and revere military violence. I have mixed feelings on it myself and I'd personally argue to let it be...but I definitely think there's a leftist case to make against violent media when you see it through that lens.

The developer who sounds like they were traumatized from having to stomach horrific imagery seems less to me like an issue with violent media and more like worker exploitation TBH. Plenty of people create horror movies out of passion and love. The issue is this person clearly was uncomfortable with the work but essentially had no alternative if they wanted to maintain employment.

When I was in highschool i got really obsessed with the concept of conditioning as taught by my psych class - operant conditioning and stuff being described in the simplest terms possible - and that led to weird places later in life. You can read between the lines if you want, but that's not why I'm here. I only wish to convey the start of a lifelong journey of deliberate self conditioning, taking the reigns of how I think and do in a way a lot of people surrender to their environment, chance, and genetic factors, i chose to control as much as one can.

This is hard work, it comes easier to some than others, but it gives me an understanding of how our inputs inform our outputs.

The major behavioral changes I really invested myself in were shedding 'male' coded thought pattern and behavior in favor of the feminine, but from the moment I undertook that work, I found that my inputs, largely dictated by circumstance and male socialization in the past, were informing my own plasticity - the flexibility of who i could be, because in some level the inputs - the media, the conversations i had - the people i surrounded myself with - all contributed to a reinforcement of what was already there, and continued development along axes i no longer found personally fulfilling.

so... i cut myself off from a lot of media. I was busy already, the free time I had no longer made sense as something i would waste on passive entertainment and matters that didn't improve myself somehow - video games became very unimportant to me, between hormonal changes and a dissatisfaction with my own mental treadmill - and especially violent games, violent media, pornography, etc.

My behavior changed. Say nothing of the hormones - the constant exposure of these elements normalized and reinforced toxic tendencies, and de-sensitized me to real human suffering that, within some months of re-ordering the inputs in my life, began to fade away and give way to a much more genuine expression of self.

I believe violent video games worsen us as humans. I believe the media we consume is largely tailored to reinforce worldviews that, even if only grudgingly, accept casual cruelty and violence at every level of society, and especially convey a sense that this is how it needs to be - and this is how American capital has largely captured the hearts and minds of its citizenry - even those of us unwilling to actually cooperate find ourselves pulled and forcibly immersed in this context that's reinforced by this kind of media.

So to me, no - the communist utopia of the unwritten future has none of this fucking shit in it - because this shit makes us worse people.

That's hard to square. I know. This garbage is the easiest dopamine pump we have, and at this point your treats are load bearing things - you would actually wanna do something stupid to remediate your material conditions if you didn't have them - and that's the point - this is the shit that makes you sleep. This is the shit Nada comprehends in black and white plain text when he puts his glasses on. You have to step away and refuse it to break out and perceive the tomorrow you yearn for with the religiosity of a devout Catholic seeking divine union.

Kind of glad honestly I didn't grow up with the hyper realistic depictions of gore kids see today in games. Back when it was cartoon camp and I think that's why I enjoyed it. Seeing a zombie head explode in Resident Evil with psx graphics is more cartoonish than high fidelity gore referenced off someone murdered.

Going to take the brave controversial stance that forcing people to look at shocking and disturbing materials shouldn't be done, especially given you can literally just reference other art like slasher movies and horror paintings

No thesis here except it's complicated, but here's a bunch of thoughts:

Violence in games in general - There's way too much of it. The default verb in games is to kill. Child-friendly games that are not considered violent, like Mario, still have the player kill scores of beings. This is not a problem with Mario, or any individual game, but a wider societal problem where violence is seen as the default solution, and problems that can be addressed by violence the default problems. Of last year's top 20 best selling games, only four didn't feature violence as a primary problem solving method, and all four of those were sports games (and are Madden and Mario Kart even non-violent?). That's 80%. Do 80% of all interesting situations involve violence?

Censorship as a response - Is a non-solution. If a state or corporate response is needed, it should be in providing grants to non-violent games until non-violent mechanics are more normalized.

Military shooters - The violence in these is a minor problem compared to the ten layers of rancid ideology atop it.

Ultraviolent games - These are super niche so they're fine. I mean it'd be completely fucked if 80% of games featured Mortal Kombat levels of gore, but that's not in danger of happening.

MK fatalities specifically - Yeah someone should go to jail for creating an unsafe work environment. There's no difference between this and a construction site telling people to go around without hard hats.

philosophically i think it's weird and bad for a society to prise and detail violence in art, but not strongly enough that it should have legal censure. mortal combat is pretty unique circumstances 99% due to the economic organization not so much the content. fixing someone having to look at gore to keep their job & be fed can be done without catching folks doing gory stuff on their own time for their own enjoyment

I think that young kids shouldn't play ultra violent video games, and that people shouldn't be forced to work on them.

No one should be subjected to real life (or fictional) gore if they cannot handle it. For some jobs such as movie/show production, you may not really get a choice in what your participate in because the studio decides based on various reasons. But some more specialized like video games, the studio will usually be known for specific genres or franchises. Like if you apply to Rockstar games, which is already very exclusive and famous, and you become shocked that you have to animate a horse’s head getting blown off, I’m not sure what to tell you.

And, will photo-realistic Fatalities exist in the communist future?

Lol look at current communist history. A lot of it is bloody, and many of its commemorations and memorials involve some of the bloodiest wars against fascists and imperialists. Is Mortal Kombat insulting when placed alongside Come and See? Of course. But I imagine the Soviets would create their own Call of Duty letting players play as Red soldiers gunning down screaming Nazis, and it will be good. Violent media can be introspective, or it can simply reinforce the status quo. Also, much of the world plays violent games too, and they don’t end up psychopathic like American/western/white gamers.

The example of the Mortal Kombat developer really seems more like employee mistreatment rather than a problem with depicting ultra-violence itself. Nobody should be forced to look at gore for their job. Mortal Kombat fatalities are not "realistic" by any stretch anyways, no idea why they felt the need to go the "extra mile" there.

On the consumer end, I would say the context and framing of violence matters much more than the degree of brutality or the detail of its depiction. If I play an RPG Maker game where a pixel guy walks out of frame and then I hear a gunshot followed by the sound of a puppy whimpering, that will impact me much more than seeing Scorpion rip out Sub Zero's heart and then burn him alive. Or the infamous Fullmetal Alchemist example where the dad fused his dog and his daughter together, not graphic in the slightest but it was and is a genuinely haunting scene. Meanwhile, nobody is actually traumatized by going on a murderous rampage in GTA San Andreas or playing MK9 as a 14-year-old.

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I’d file the psychic damage the devs went through under the general category of game companies treating their employees like disposable grist.

I’ll make the more core observation that generally speaking, ultra-realistic ultra violence and good game rarely go together. Things like the early MK games (imma get back to this) and the GTA games were more exceptions to the rule than the rule. Ultra violent games tend to be bad for the same reason porn games are mostly bad; when you’re luring in customers on the shock and titillation, it means that can serve as a substitute for quality gaming.

Like, I’ve been watching some of the high level matches from the most recent EVO, and those are some entertaining matches. The guilty gear strive final was amazing, the third strike final was great, the third strike quarterfinal between Hayao and Frankiebfg was legend tier, Tekken 8 finals were great, same for SF6. And then there was the MK1 finals, which were absolutely dull. And I don’t think it was the competitors’ fault, SonicFox is one of the all-time greats. It’s because the game itself is just not well designed for interesting competitive play. The ultraviolence in modern MK games is definitely a sideshow to distract you from how bland the core gameplay is.

I see what you're saying, but ultimately I think it doesn't have to do with the violence itself and more to do with the overall way in which we frame things. For example, no matter how hard a creator might try to make something seem "brutal" or "anticapitalist," there's gonna be people that interpret it completely the other way. Kind of like the "Squid Game is actually pretty cool! Also it's pro capitalist and anti communist!"

Same thing for violence I think. Like past and current indigenous cultures are very close to "violence" when it comes to things like hunting and slaughtering livestock for food, but you didn't see the kind of brutal violence you're talking about until things colonialism/imperialism.

I could see a future communist society that doesn't have issues with real life violence but still has action movies and video games. It doesn't really seem like a contradiction to me.

there will be no depictions of violence in any game created in a communist society - sorry instead you will have popular games like Bonobo Kissing Simulator 7 and Seize The Means XXIV which is actually the most popular RRPG (Russian Roleplaying Game) in the Year of our Commune 2067

I like gore and ludicrous gibs in my video games

Specifically, I like video game gore when it's dynamic and responsive to player input, ie shooting or meleeing enemies. It doesn't even have to be blood and guts- Binary Domain made the act of murdering endless waves of generic robots satisfying by having them emit out clouds of shrapnel, sparks and oil when you shot them with your guns as well as making it possible to explode any of their limbs with enough damage.

Mortal Kombat Fatalities are different though since you just sit and watch something weird and gross happen for 30 seconds

I’ve always liked the campy Sam Reimi-esque “Johnny Cage explodes into twelve rib cages and a bunch of ketchup red gore” stuff of the older games, but I’ve heard the newer ones push the realism a little too hard for some.

With MK specifically I'd like to add that the PTSD those developers / artists etc. got was for an aspect of the game -- fatalities -- that in my experience most people stop even using after they've seen all the animations.

Maybe it's different with the newest one, but I remember after the first two or three months or so people just stopped doing the fatalities because it's just a cutscene to sit through before you get to play more game, since you only do it after the fight is essentially over anyway.

To the broader point about the acceptability / existence of ultra-violent / gory media in a hypothetical left-wing society: sure? The traumatization of workers is unacceptable, but the work they did now exists, and can be copied by future artists without having to directly subject themselves to snuff films and garbage like that.

There might be some impulse to pursue even more realistic depictions of the gore and death, but I hope a socialist / communist society could remember the value of artistic license over blindly pursuing ultra-realism. Besides, IMO the thing that made fatalities entertaining in the first place was more about how over-the-top they were, rather than being revolting or horrifying.

Look there's always if your sensibilities can't handle a little fictional carnage. People who work on MK knew what they were getting into. Same in Hollywood. There's warnings and ratings to satisfy those who can't take it or don't want their kids exposed to it. Should there be more aupport warnings in the workforce yes.

I don't subscribe going to feed into the DOOM is from the devil and causes violence like some Christian Karen. I don't think art should be limited or controlled. Appropriate warnings sure, but after seening all the culture panic from Dungeons and Dragons board gsmes to video games cauae X to Hairy Potter to the current Queer books turn kids queer if they are in the vacinity I don't buy it.

What I blame is the constant sucking of material conditions and erosion of social support systems. I blame our policies of it's ok to genocide and as long as the check clears then who cares. I blame systematic dulling of creativity and enshittification. I blame our so called leaders gaslighting on xenophobia. Blaming minorities for theirr problems.

I watched 2 hours of cable TV whils my parents are glued to Judge Judy. The campaign ads on both-sides sides were disgusting, racist, xenopobic, and fascist.

backdrop of Dancing laughing Immigrants are coming in droves TERRORISTS to murder and kill and suck your hard earned dollar! They are coming to GET YOU!

Republican Mike Rogers is a deciever a liar and corrupt! ..... also HE'S A SECRETLY MANIPULATED BY THE CHINESE - vote Democrat.

Libs of Tik Tok driving stochastic terrorism and real shootings and bomb threats and whipping up a moral panic to end people's jobs for supporting minorities.

That is the stuff from IRL against IRL. Subzero fractured skulls like Sherlock Homes discombobulated isn't not IRL.

I just hate zombie media. All bad, ban it.