this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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That's part of this whole debate that I'd love to see much more focus on. Why are so many video games built around violence? Like, violence in video games may not be bad, but what makes it so popular?
Obviously, there's some folks who love blood splatter effects and some (horror) games cater to that. But then you've got RPGs where people report having their immersion broken from how much genocide their hero has to commit. Or even child-friendly/cutesy games sometimes struggling to make it make sense (Pokémon don't die, they just faint, and they totally want to fight, yep).
It just feels like the demand for violence is significantly lower than the supply and I've never seen comprehensive research into why that is.
It's interesting that almost every single game involves violence and death in some way.
I suspect that it's just a universally understood concept that every living creature gets.
Death bad, alive good.
Violence is just part of our predator DNA.
I don't have time to confirm it right now but I think this has the video where I first heard this brought up: https://youtu.be/cYnylXvk65s?si=Y5qQmMC09nb4YvAq
Yeah, I've also seen it argued on a much smaller scale, that fun in video games is often done on a risk-reward basis. You bring yourself in danger to get a reward. And well, there's other ways than violence to portray that, like spikes in a jump'n'run or a stupid wall in a racing game. There's also other ways to induce fun, like puzzle mechanics. But yeah, ultimately you're left with a small fraction of genres that really work or have been explored...
Its the simplest expression of "make value equal 0 for win condition".
You can make a program that displays 1 x 0 = 0 whenever you hit the mouse button. In theory, that is as much as a game as Street Fighter or Fortnite.
I think we have some inherent limitations when creating win conditions for games, as animals we have an inherent propensity for violence. Not that we are violent as a group, but that we have such instincts as a result of or evolution. Breaking out of that box requires a much higher degree of creative effort than "kill the bad guy", and it may struggle as a product even still thanks to the way our brains are wired.
Part of it is the very mechanics of gaming, they're all built on a core of goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. When telling a story, the four basic forms of conflict are man against man, man against nature, man against self, and man against society. Violence is an easy vehicle for three of those conflicts, and especially lends itself to active gameplay loops. Mind you, I'm referring to violence as acting to cause injury, because there are a lot of games that are built around fighting with zero gore or death.
The other thing is that violence is just very popular. If you stop to really consider it, how much entertainment is free of violence? How many shows and movies are completely nonviolent? How many books don't have a single fight? There are genres that typically avoid violence, but even then you'll still find members of the genre that contain physical conflict. Plenty of romance and dramas that are steeped in fighting and death.
At any rate, not that my perspective's any more valuable than anyone else's but I really haven't seen a demand for violence that's lower that the supply.