The fact that you are killing "the enemy" in most games does not make your actions right or excusable, just convenient

Oct 17, 2014 18:07 GMT  ·  By

There's been a lot of discussion regarding the topic of violence in video games, and apparently the discussion is far from over.

A trailer for an upcoming top-down shooter that uses excessive violence as an excuse for pretty much everything is rousing a strong reaction from the gaming community on a popular forum, due to its questionable choice of setting.

The game, titled Hatred, is described by its developers as a horror game where you are the antagonist, a homicidal maniac that hates the world and wants to kill as many innocent people as he is able to before being gunned down.

Many gamers are seeing that as something rather juvenile and uncouth, with some going as far as saying that games like that are the reason gamers are seen as sociopaths in the first place.

Other are stating that, simply put, Hatred is what shooter games are when you stop lying to yourself, or just a natural evolution of free speech, if you would prefer a more neutral approach.

The same discussion ad nauseam

People have been doing heinous stuff since the dawn of civilization, and we're at our most civil and docile point in our existence right now. The problem is that you wouldn't believe that by watching some telly and seeing how many crimes are reported all around the world, not to mention stuff like civil wars, proper wars, totalitarian regimes, corruption, and all the other bad stuff that makes the news.

One of the problems is access to information, as the more evolved we become, the more we learn about our surroundings and fellow humans, including the nastier points of life and reports from various places on Earth where life isn't as peachy as it is for some.

The question of violence in video games has been one largely carried in the United States, Australia, Western Europe, and some other such places, while in other areas of the world where there are more pressing matters to tackle, people simply don't care, dismiss it as a trivial issue, or go to church to ask for esoteric guidance on the matter and then enforce their point of view as the definitive one or a similarly ludicrous process.

This discussion has been done to death, with many alarmists raising the question of the repercussions of being subjected to violence in video games, of little kids growing up to be murderers. This has been shown time and time again to be false, but it's easier to deny the truth if it doesn't serve your purpose.

After all, we have all learned that if you eat flowers, you'll be able to spit fire, and turtles are almost extinct from people hopping on them. Also, everyone is a race car driver after playing Need for Speed, and EA Sports UFC is used in gyms instead of weight training.

Furthermore, we can all remember how in the '90s, an entire generation of mass murderers was just waiting for Grand Theft Auto to come out and trigger and validate their killing spree fantasies.

All joking aside, the basic discussion here is that video games, much like any other medium for conveying ideas and entertainment, has some high and some lows, and the best thing we can do is support the things we like, ignore the others, and stop telling other people what to like.

Shock value can only go so far

A lot of people have reacted to works of art, literature and movies with similarly questionable content in pretty much the same way, a general uproar regarding what is perceived as an affront to good taste.

The good thing about living in this day and age is that we can see that, because there is so much variety in everything that surrounds us, there is little need to seek external validation to this extent.

It's a wonderful feeling of freedom, knowing that you share so much with people with such varying taste, it's a feeling known as maturity. Life isn't binary, it's not a question of black or white, good or evil, it has a wealth of shades of personal preference, which should be reflected in our art.

The theme of whether video games are art or not is for people with too much free time to debate. Everything that belongs to culture can be art, and that is largely attributed to the ingenuity of the act.

If Brancusi created Bird in Space as a work of art, and people who like art in general can appreciate it and take something away from it, I will respect their opinion to some degree, as it's too simplistic for my taste, but I won't call the sculptor a complete fraud just because I think he's lazy.

The same goes with violence in games. If some people want to make a game with a juvenile premise where you are rebelling against "the man" or whatever and the whole point is killing virtual civilians, let them.

Being quick to express the fact that you disapprove of their work won't win you any points with Mother Teresa and won't shut them up. It will draw a lot of publicity to them though, and make their work known to a lot more people.

Agency has a very important role to play

The problem here is that the pitchfork mob mentality is more like a movement that seeks to validate its members and destroy what they don't like, but presented under the guise of critique.

The thing is, the puerile plot and kitsch manner in which the character is presented, seemingly lacking any actual depth, and showcased as some kind of walking death metal-listening sociopath stereotype, are not addressed as much as the fact that you kill civilians.

The thing about games is that nothing happens without your agreement. If the game's sole purpose is to serve as Killing Spree Simulator 2014, it's going to be a horribly boring game. And guess what, you don't even have to kill them. It's your choice.

Granted, the narrative in games like Uncharted or Grand Theft Auto V offers some context to the killing of hundreds of nameless henchmen, but the fact of the matter remains. If you think that the murder of hundreds of mercenaries guarding some drug lord's plantation is kosher just because you somehow represent the forces of good, you're just the guy in the trailer below in disguise.

The fault here is the fact that people are willing to take arms and attack others, and less the context in which that happens. The general consensus is that when you're defending against an assault, it's okay to shoot people. Which is exactly what the hundreds of mercs you kill in Uncharted are doing, defending from your attack.

You're in a location where you have no place being, that is under strict guard, sneaking around armed. It's a fair bet to say that if you were caught doing that near a lot of military installations, you would get shot, and if you were assigned guard duty in such an installation, you would open fire on Nathan Drake yourself.

It's easy to paint a target on someone else

Unfortunately, it's easier to condemn that which you don't like or understand, and it's convenient to paint someone else as the bad guy. It's easy to dismiss a spree killer as demented, without looking into their motives and trying to see whether you can prevent something like that from happening in the future.

Taking a life is a tragedy no matter how you look at it, even when people who caused a lot of harm are killed. All life is precious and overlooking that is what's really the issue. The fact that some people are OK with killing tens and hundreds of "enemies" because someone else told them to or they think it's justified is the real cause of worry.

Killing virtual assets has no bearing on the real world, but when you start thinking that it's okay to kill zombies or citizens from third-world countries or aliens or mutants because they don't look like you or because you want their riches or because they're shooting at you when you're invading them, then the lines tend to blur.

A very nice and challenging book that addresses this notion is "I Am Legend," to which unfortunately the film adaptation didn't live up to. In the book (published in 1954), the human protagonist indiscriminately kills zombie vampires, which are seen by him as an enemy.

The problem is that, over the course of the novel, the protagonist discovers that he himself is viewed by them with the same fear and hatred that he felt for zombie vampires, and that the infected have created their own post-human society, in which he is the enemy.

Hatred screenshots (3 Images)

Murder never looked this good
Hopefully, there's more than shooting to the gameI doubt the bus is gonna stop now
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