http://www.gamespot.com/news/the-ultraviolence-has-to-stop-warren-spector-6382680 Personally, I think he's going a bit too far. I agree that retailers should be more careful when selling games to minors, but as a 20 year old gamer, I still want some M-rated goodness for many more years to come.
Well, I don't know about violence having to stop per se, but maybe the fact that so many M-rated games have come out so recently. I've yet to watch the recordings of E3, so I'm not sure exactly what was played on it, but I kinda agree that we could make less M-rated games and make more T-rated games. But that's just me, since I really don't find much fun in M-rated games. There can be games with violence, but considering what games have been like for the past few years, they've slowly led to being more real, and real life isn't just sunshine and flowers, and that's what's led to ultraviolence, in a sense. I'm kinda losing my point here, so I guess what I'm saying is that maybe we don't need to stop Ultraviolence, but just make less of it.
"I think we're just appealing to an adolescent mindset and calling it mature." That is 100% true. "Mature" games are so in name only; there's nothing mature about them these days. Spector himself is vague in his prediction, but it would be unwise to ignore him. I already have my moments in some games, where the abruptness or sheer intensity of violence in a scene makes me shudder, but what makes it worse is the fact that I'm the only one shuddering. People are becoming desensitized to this stuff. At the same time, they clamor for more of it, which gives developers an incentive to keep making games all about the violence. Another worry I have is that it will snuff out other forms of artistic expression in video games, if they keep feeding the addiction.
The gaming industry will stop churning out ultraviolence the day that Warren Spector apologizes for producing a game that had the most ridiculous camera setting for an action/adventure game (i.e. Epic Mickey). Better yet, make a game post the year 2000 that is actually, I don't know, GOOD? In all seriousness though, I think the consumer and gamer can decide what type of games that they want to play and what they do not want to play. If you don't like it, don't buy it. There has always been non-violent games of every stripe and for every console. No one is exactly forcing the gamer and a person to purchase the final product so at the end of the day, just decide with your own dollar. A parent who blames a video game for its violence and lack of censoring for their children is an irresponsible parent.
But Ultraviolence has a totally different meaning nowadays. Ultraviolence means extreme, or glorified and glamourized, depictions of violence. This generation is being steadily desentisized to deeper levels of subject matter and violence. What was once ultraviolence is commonplace now. For instance, in the 1980s if they saw the blood splatter from headshots in Call of Duty, given how realistic the game looks, it'd be ultraviolence. That's somewhat tame now. Now take a game like, Afro Samurai or the soon-to-come Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. That is considered ultraviolence now and back then would most likely be banned. Ultraviolence isn't simply something that can't be stopped. It's, believe it or not, an artistic and sometimes stylistic choice that game designers make. Stifling them would be stifling art. Also, the games are rated M. That's like saying, "You can't curse in this R-rated movie!" If the games get into the hands of minors, that's either a parent's or a negligent employee's fault.
Isn't that what he's saying, though? That it's a bad thing that we're getting so desensitized to violence that the extreme will become the mean. If the "ultraviolence" of today keeps becoming the "violence" of tomorrow, then the "ultraviolence" of tomorrow will just be that much more...ultra. And everyone's going to see it like they do now: "Oh, it's artistic! Good graphics! Realistic!" instead of actually being turned off by it. It's one thing to stifle "art" (and I use that term loosely when it comes to violence), it's another thing to have violent imagery for the sake of having violent imagery. I'm with Sforzato here.
As Wingly said I think the "problem" isn' t that video games are becoming too violent, it' s that they have more and more realistic graphics. Video games have always exploited humdrum violence, it' s nothing new. Hell, realistic violence is nothing new either, it' s been part of the industry since Mortal Kombat or Carmageddon, or even before that : back on the Nes Konami renamed Contra and replaced its human enemies with robots for western releases, lousy sprites or not we were indeed controlling mass-murderers. I don' t think it' s really a problem though. Ultra-violence (Mortal Kombat, Re-Vengeance, Mad-World) is meant to be funny, I can' t for the hell of me figure out why anyone would think it' s meant to be taken seriously. As for believable violence it' s just meant to be as cathartic as hitting a punching ball. The kind of violence that usually raise flags in video games is the obvious graphic violence, but that' s just meat. To me real violence is psychological, much more insidious than purely graphic violence, I don' t think video games put any more emphasis on that kind of violence than any other media or, well, real life. The dichotomy presented by Warren Spector seems to be blood/no blood, but that' s a false dichotomy, as long as you stomp/eat/firaga/whatever whole crowds of living beings into oblivion being bloody or not doesn' t make any relevant difference, I' d even say that adding blood is more honest really. Personally what I would really like to see is game concepts made by girls because let' s face it, for now the industry is essentially (completely ?) ruled by masculine minds.
