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By and large the endless arguments over computer game violence are uninteresting rehashes of exactly the same complaints people present about artistic extremities in other media - explicit language in music, gratuitous sex or violence in films and so on. What interests me at present about this debate is that it has often been mooted that as games become more graphically accurate, to the point of photo-realism, the shock of the scale of violence in many computer games will have a greater impact. (And, if you follow the reactionary line of argument, we'll all become senseless moral degenerates).
But what many people overlook is not just a case of the vividness of the graphics but the modelling of impact damage - something that the original "Soldier of Fortune" pioneered and is about to take a second major step forward with. I am intrigued as to how this is going to affect future games.
Moral purists have long claimed that computer games are "worse" in terms of violence than films "because it's the player that does the killing." Fairly soon games are going to be able to have your foe realistically recoil from your shots depending on where you hit them, and render it all in highly accurate 3D claret. Are we beginning to reach the stage where computer deaths are becoming too accurate?
There is the artistic question to take into account too. In films and even books there are countless examples of the narrator numbing a death scene by cutting to a shot of something else - a hand going limp, or another person grimacing as a death shot is fired. It gives a special kind of impact, conditions the audiences' reaction. But surely this kind of sophisticated and desensitising touch could not be replicated in a game where to onus is on the player's interactivity.
I am not concerned that the growing realism of the simulation of murder in computer games is going to corrupt otherwise sensible people - I have considerable contempt for anyone naive enough to advocate ideas such as this. But there remains the question of the impressionable audience and the constant reminders that as long as we rely upon the integrity of parents to assure that children of insufficient maturity to play certain games do not do so. Perhaps parents need to be educated about the sophisication of modern games and informed that established guidelines are there for a reason and, perhaps more so than any other regulatory system for other media, must be heeded.
I'd be very interested to hear other opinions on this.
But what many people overlook is not just a case of the vividness of the graphics but the modelling of impact damage - something that the original "Soldier of Fortune" pioneered and is about to take a second major step forward with. I am intrigued as to how this is going to affect future games.
Moral purists have long claimed that computer games are "worse" in terms of violence than films "because it's the player that does the killing." Fairly soon games are going to be able to have your foe realistically recoil from your shots depending on where you hit them, and render it all in highly accurate 3D claret. Are we beginning to reach the stage where computer deaths are becoming too accurate?
There is the artistic question to take into account too. In films and even books there are countless examples of the narrator numbing a death scene by cutting to a shot of something else - a hand going limp, or another person grimacing as a death shot is fired. It gives a special kind of impact, conditions the audiences' reaction. But surely this kind of sophisticated and desensitising touch could not be replicated in a game where to onus is on the player's interactivity.
I am not concerned that the growing realism of the simulation of murder in computer games is going to corrupt otherwise sensible people - I have considerable contempt for anyone naive enough to advocate ideas such as this. But there remains the question of the impressionable audience and the constant reminders that as long as we rely upon the integrity of parents to assure that children of insufficient maturity to play certain games do not do so. Perhaps parents need to be educated about the sophisication of modern games and informed that established guidelines are there for a reason and, perhaps more so than any other regulatory system for other media, must be heeded.
I'd be very interested to hear other opinions on this.
By and large the endless arguments over computer game violence are uninteresting rehashes of exactly the same complaints people present about artistic extremities in other media - explicit language in music, gratuitous sex or violence in films and so on. What interests me at present about this debate is that it has often been mooted that as games become more graphically accurate, to the point of photo-realism, the shock of the scale of violence in many computer games will have a greater impact. (And, if you follow the reactionary line of argument, we'll all become senseless moral degenerates).
But what many people overlook is not just a case of the vividness of the graphics but the modelling of impact damage - something that the original "Soldier of Fortune" pioneered and is about to take a second major step forward with. I am intrigued as to how this is going to affect future games.
Moral purists have long claimed that computer games are "worse" in terms of violence than films "because it's the player that does the killing." Fairly soon games are going to be able to have your foe realistically recoil from your shots depending on where you hit them, and render it all in highly accurate 3D claret. Are we beginning to reach the stage where computer deaths are becoming too accurate?
There is the artistic question to take into account too. In films and even books there are countless examples of the narrator numbing a death scene by cutting to a shot of something else - a hand going limp, or another person grimacing as a death shot is fired. It gives a special kind of impact, conditions the audiences' reaction. But surely this kind of sophisticated and desensitising touch could not be replicated in a game where to onus is on the player's interactivity.
I am not concerned that the growing realism of the simulation of murder in computer games is going to corrupt otherwise sensible people - I have considerable contempt for anyone naive enough to advocate ideas such as this. But there remains the question of the impressionable audience and the constant reminders that as long as we rely upon the integrity of parents to assure that children of insufficient maturity to play certain games do not do so. Perhaps parents need to be educated about the sophisication of modern games and informed that established guidelines are there for a reason and, perhaps more so than any other regulatory system for other media, must be heeded.
I'd be very interested to hear other opinions on this.
But what many people overlook is not just a case of the vividness of the graphics but the modelling of impact damage - something that the original "Soldier of Fortune" pioneered and is about to take a second major step forward with. I am intrigued as to how this is going to affect future games.
Moral purists have long claimed that computer games are "worse" in terms of violence than films "because it's the player that does the killing." Fairly soon games are going to be able to have your foe realistically recoil from your shots depending on where you hit them, and render it all in highly accurate 3D claret. Are we beginning to reach the stage where computer deaths are becoming too accurate?
There is the artistic question to take into account too. In films and even books there are countless examples of the narrator numbing a death scene by cutting to a shot of something else - a hand going limp, or another person grimacing as a death shot is fired. It gives a special kind of impact, conditions the audiences' reaction. But surely this kind of sophisticated and desensitising touch could not be replicated in a game where to onus is on the player's interactivity.
I am not concerned that the growing realism of the simulation of murder in computer games is going to corrupt otherwise sensible people - I have considerable contempt for anyone naive enough to advocate ideas such as this. But there remains the question of the impressionable audience and the constant reminders that as long as we rely upon the integrity of parents to assure that children of insufficient maturity to play certain games do not do so. Perhaps parents need to be educated about the sophisication of modern games and informed that established guidelines are there for a reason and, perhaps more so than any other regulatory system for other media, must be heeded.
I'd be very interested to hear other opinions on this.