[CW: violence/gore]. As the title suggests, is there a left case to be made against ultra-violence in video games? I’m thinking mostly about MK11 and MK1 fatalities, as opposed to less gratuitous and less hyper-realistic violence–in Dark Souls or something. Whenever this topic is brought up, other factors usually take up the oxygen in the room: People might immediately think of family-values conservatives, such as the Media Research Center, who act like wet-blankets towards entertainment. Or we think of nerdy Joe Lieberman, who showed the 1993 Sub-Zero spine fatality to Congress (lol). There was Hillary Clinton who decried the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the host of rightwing politicians who blamed Doom for the Columbine shooting (clearly as a way to absolve gun legislation from any culpability). So this is what I mean when I say that the conversation on video-game violence has been ceded entirely to these dudes, as opposed to something left spaces can discuss without sounding like squares or censors. 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. That can’t be good for anyone. I guess what I’m asking is: should leftists see this as harmless fun, or something problematic? And, will photo-realistic Fatalities exist in the communist future?
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.
As we learned from the production of Dead Space, being forced to look at mangled bodies and surgeries came down from management
It’s the exact sort of thing some asshole would think “makes it genuine”
Hell, I’m past the “innate transgression of violence and gore” phase, I want shit to look goofy aka Mortal Kombat was better when you uppercut a guy’s head and fifteen ribcages and a spleen fly out
That sucks about Dead Space. I didn’t know about that until now.
I used to really like the Mortal Kombat games. The KMFDM movie soundtrack still slaps.
The “authenticity” era and the toxic hogs that insisted that their violence could be produced no other way than causing emotional distress to game developers soured my feelings toward the franchise, though.
Whenever someone says “(product) is for babies” because of a perceived lack of
, the usual implication is that something edgy, vulgar, and/or sensationalistic is the definition of “mature” that everyone after a certain age should, or even must, performatively gobble up that kind of slop for maturity points.
Hell, Dead Space 2 had their “Your mom would hate this game!” ad campaign in 2011
I was old enough to drink
that was extremely funny but not in the manner they intended
That should be standard practice because it reduces suffering to the workers and the treat is roughly the same in the end result.
Plus they do this with sound already via foley techniques. Some visual art swaps out alternatives for real subjects, like using shaving cream instead of whipped cream since it won’t melt under studio lighting. The demand for “authenticity” is from corporate ghouls with no imagination.
Same deal with sound; the classic “bones snapping/crunching” sound is actually from snapping fresh celery. Actual bone snapping sounds aren’t used because, well it’s just doesn’t carry the same sonic punch.
what radicalized you?