this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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That's part of this whole debate that I'd love to see much more focus on. Why are so many video games built around violence? Like, violence in video games may not be bad, but what makes it so popular?
Obviously, there's some folks who love blood splatter effects and some (horror) games cater to that. But then you've got RPGs where people report having their immersion broken from how much genocide their hero has to commit. Or even child-friendly/cutesy games sometimes struggling to make it make sense (Pokémon don't die, they just faint, and they totally want to fight, yep).
It just feels like the demand for violence is significantly lower than the supply and I've never seen comprehensive research into why that is.
It's interesting that almost every single game involves violence and death in some way.
I suspect that it's just a universally understood concept that every living creature gets.
Death bad, alive good.
Violence is just part of our predator DNA.
I don't have time to confirm it right now but I think this has the video where I first heard this brought up: https://youtu.be/cYnylXvk65s?si=Y5qQmMC09nb4YvAq
Yeah, I've also seen it argued on a much smaller scale, that fun in video games is often done on a risk-reward basis. You bring yourself in danger to get a reward. And well, there's other ways than violence to portray that, like spikes in a jump'n'run or a stupid wall in a racing game. There's also other ways to induce fun, like puzzle mechanics. But yeah, ultimately you're left with a small fraction of genres that really work or have been explored...