[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?
I think some ultraviolence in video games is okay when it's presented as a bad thing. Hotline Miami comes to mind where it forces the player to look at what they've done and reflect on it. It turns the adrenaline pumping action sequences into horror as you realize you and your character are not right in the head. You're forced to quietly reflect as you exit the building past dead and mutilated bodies.
One of the problems I've had with modern games is how much they normalize the military. It's no secret the DoD and CIA have their hands in video games. They can use unrealistic violence as a recruiting method. Players get used to the idea of blowing up Arabs with goofy ragdoll physics, completely isolating them from the violence inflicted in the real world.
Saving Private Ryan caused military recruitment to drop and it never recovered, even after 9/11. The powers that be realized they dropped the ball but were saved by pivoting to video games. A game with Come and See, Saving Private Ryan, or Schindler's List levels of realistic violence could potentially turn people off to war as a game. This has never been done as far as I'm aware.
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The only attempt I can think of is Spec Ops: The Line, but I don't think it's had a particularly impactful role in the long term.
Inspired by Heart of Darkness, it sets you in the shoes of John McSuperCool Operator, on a CIA spec-ops mission to investigate a rogue US battalion in Dubai.
As you progress, you basically get deeper and deeper into the shit because John thinks it's his personal duty to be a hero and stop the commander of the rogue battalion, only for him to progressively kill more and more people that didn't need to die, culminating in wiping out an entire group of civilian refugees with white phosphorous and being confronted with the reality that he's a fucking monster.
There's a lot of arguments about whether the game ends up being a valid critique of the COD formula or not, but it definitely looks like it was at least 'trying' something.
Spec Ops: The Line was pretty good but the white phosphorous scene felt a little forced to me. Like, you have to use the war crimes weapon on a group that as a player you're thinking "nah I could probably sneak/shoot through that" and the game doesn't let you make the choice of not massacring civilians. For most of the game when you do something awful, you the player are doing it because you have John SpecOps's warped perspective, but then the game gives a big "do an obvious war crime" button and forces you to push it to proceed.
They gave the concept a good try though.
Yeah that scene also fell a little flat for me. The specific scene takes place on an enclosed rooftop area where you're dealing with a bunch of dudes on other rooftops around a plaza, and it's actually not hard to "win" the gunfight by any reasonable metric but, unlike anywhere else in the game that I can remember, the guys just keep spawning infinitely to force you to hit the war crime button.
However, I don't think we're the target audience. The game was meant, I think, to force the average Call of Duty or whatever player to think of all those faceless brown goons they're always using as target practice as the things that they represent, to force a bit of perspective back into the kinds of games that they enjoy. I mean, these players are literally dropping nukes, executing helpless enemies, etc. Most of them don't think twice about committing virtual war crimes.
Very interesting. I hadn't thought about the "use" of violence in an anti-military way before.