WORDS Eoin Moore

Violence is a pervasive aspect of modern day video games. In comparison with film or tv, which feature violence but by no means to the same excessive degree, this may seem like a perverse, inexplicable quality. However, looking back on the roots of the video game as purely a medium of entertainment, the reason for this fixation on death and violence is quite obvious. Gamers find violence fun. Specifically, the brand of violence which the most popular video game genres, First Person Shooters, RPGs, and Action-Adventure games feature. This is the kind of violence which the player rains down upon a massive selection of anonymous bad guys, and it’s extremely satisfying as a gameplay feature as well as a form of wish fulfilment. The player’s power fantasy is bolstered by the destruction they enact upon the game world, and their feeling of invincibility is reinforced by the evident mortality of their enemies.

Take a look at any of the flagship titles of the new console generation, for instance Killzone: Shadow Fall, Assassin’s Creed IV, or Battlefield 4. Whether through a first-person rifle scope or via a third person rapier, almost all contain this classic formula of widespread, consequence-free murder. Some would argue that this abundance of fictional violence — placing the player in the role of a mass-murderer and rewarding them for committing virtual atrocities — is macabre, immoral, or even dangerous. This is an argument as old as the first time a pixellated pedestrian was crushed by a speeding vehicle in 1976’s Death Race, and it’s a tired and bitter one. What’s more interesting about this overwhelmingly dominant trend in gaming is how it corresponds to the uneasy area in which games lie: somewhere between a flourishing artistic medium and pure, chaotic fun. Gamers are naturally defensive of the right for video games to portray violence, as they should, but in doing so they often overlook the implications this violence has on video games as an art form. This standard has been so heavily propagated since the days of the Wolfenstein and Metal Slug, two video game classics which also featured violence as a central component, that it has been taken as a given element of video games. And that is what’s dangerous. For video games which want nothing more than to be enjoyable kill-fests this isn’t a problem. But for video games that strive for substance and depth, this reliance on violence as a gameplay feature poses a serious problem.

GTA V is an obvious example of this hangover from gaming’s past disrupting the possibility of advancing the video game as a narrative vehicle. The game’s writing was lauded, but the story it was trying to tell was hampered by hyper-violent gameplay.Critics complained that it was difficult to sympathise with any of the characters, as their motivations either didn’t make sense in light of their actions or (in the case of Trevor, one of the game’s playable characters) made perfect sense but meant that the character in question was an insane psychopath. It simply isn’t possible to tell a realistic story about psychologically rounded characters who just so happen to murder hundreds of people on a daily basis without a care. This gameplay-serving mechanic is impossible to resolve as part of the story, and it indicates a huge and jarring divorce between narrative content and gameplay content. This internal conflict fractures the gameplay experience.

Some games attempt to resolve these disparate elements. Post-apocalyptic dystopia The Last of Us, for instance, attempted to make up for the senseless nature of this violence by integrating it into the fabric of the game world while also presenting the violence in a truly horrifying light. The game’s visceral brutality, combined with the notable strain it placed upon the main character, added a realistic weight to violence that video games often fail or don’t bother to capture. But, in spite of how well this violence was captured, from a gameplay perspective it was identical to any other Triple-A title. No matter how horrifying the monsters were or how desperate and human the raiders seemed, they were evidently not characters but obstacles for the player to overcome. While the first few deaths may cause the player to rethink their actions or what they’ve come to take for granted, by the halfway mark of that 15-20 hour experience they end up being reduced to the simple gameplay factors they always were, completely divorced from any thematic or narrative significance they may have once had. LA Noire is similarly conflicted in this regard. The numerous murder investigations show horrifyingly mutilated bodies and attempt to explore the mentality of psychotic killers. This is achieved to a certain degree, but these sections are completely undermined by the numerous shootouts the player takes part in against nameless henchmen. Here lies the central problem: Games cannot explore the rich concepts of death and violence while simultaneously obligating the player to commit meaningless acts of violence on a massive scale.

Military shooters could be seen as an attempt to include realistic and impactful violence while also incorporating violence into an engaging gameplay element. Seemingly, this should allow them to tell a deep and engaging story while also facilitating fun, satisfying gameplay. However, it’s here that the distinction becomes most clear. These narratives take place in a realistic setting but heighten the player character to the level of an unstoppable god. This classic power-fantasy which in a mythical or science-fiction world would seem simply immature is considerably more sinister in a realistic present day conflict or a real historical conflict. Including realistic weaponry, locations, and military scenarios but corrupting them into this false narrative is an insensitive misappropriation of real world events – taking real world conflicts and turning them into a form of sport – and could even be seen as an attempt to delude the player into accepting certain discourses on real-world issues and events. These unsavoury elements of the military shooter genre are brilliantly deconstructed in Spec Ops: The Line, a game which  forces the player to truly consider the violence that this genre celebrates.

So what can be concluded from this state of affairs? My intention is not to claim that all games have to be great artistic achievements, or even that they should. Mindless, bloody entertainment is something that games do very well, and games that aspire to nothing more than that have no reason to do any different. The issue is with games that aim for something higher. The video game has the capability to be a great art form, but in order to do so it must abandon its dependency on mechanics which work in the context of mindless entertainment but do not elsewhere. To argue that these things don’t matter because video games are simply for fun is to forsake any hope of video games ever becoming more than that. If the video game is to truly mature as an art form these immature excuses can no longer be used.