[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?
With MK specifically I'd like to add that the PTSD those developers / artists etc. got was for an aspect of the game -- fatalities -- that in my experience most people stop even using after they've seen all the animations.
Maybe it's different with the newest one, but I remember after the first two or three months or so people just stopped doing the fatalities because it's just a cutscene to sit through before you get to play more game, since you only do it after the fight is essentially over anyway.
To the broader point about the acceptability / existence of ultra-violent / gory media in a hypothetical left-wing society: sure? The traumatization of workers is unacceptable, but the work they did now exists, and can be copied by future artists without having to directly subject themselves to snuff films and garbage like that.
There might be some impulse to pursue even more realistic depictions of the gore and death, but I hope a socialist / communist society could remember the value of artistic license over blindly pursuing ultra-realism. Besides, IMO the thing that made fatalities entertaining in the first place was more about how over-the-top they were, rather than being revolting or horrifying.