[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?
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.