[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?

  • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]
    ·
    1 个月前

    there's a point where the gore becomes purely for the sake of itself and actively unhealthy for anyone to engage with in any way.

    This is generalizing. I’ve watched fictional media where bodies are dissolved in acid or decapitated or whatever, and I can sleep and eat just fine. I don’t think about it at all.

    But I have also accidentally stumbled upon cartel or ISIS execution videos, and even edited/blurred/off camera/text descriptions of said videos haunt me. I am able to tell what’s real and what’s fake, and I never want to stumble on the real things again if I can help it. I’ve never seen the video, but there’s a particular Russian snuff film that I read the wikipedia article of when I was a kid. I still don’t seek this shit out, and I try to avoid any articles that even mention its name.

    Likewise, I can watch videos of zionists getting blown up because they’re kicking a random flag in the middle of nowhere and smile like an idiot, but I would still be traumatized over videos of Palestinians’ charred bodies and would never willingly click to view it.