For longest time I have been thinking about writing in Destructoids community blogs and doing some Monthly musings but I never before actually got around doing this. When I read about this months topic I first thought that it seemed stupid, then I thought about it a bit and desisted to take it as a challenge and write about it, even though I initially had no idea what could I talk about. Enough of meta for now, let's go and dive to the subject at hand.

So we all know that there is violence in videogames, not in every game but in many of them. There is all kinds of violence, cartoony and over the top, realistic and gritty, there's war, murder and torture. And I don't have problem with that. When I shoot a bunch of pixels that look like a man with pixels that look like gun and bullets I don't feel that I'm killing or hurting anyone, enemies are just bits in the program. In real life I could never do the things I do in videogames, I'm basically a pacifist, I don't like the thought of hurting other person and not to even talk about possibility to kill someone.



Here comes the alternative reality bit. What if real world would be like in some videogames where violence is normal and part of everyday life. What would become of world, where when you go to school bunch of bullies attack you and only thing you can do, is to beat up those bullies so that only thing left is their pocket money. World where kill or be killed should always be taken literally.

What a horrible life could that be and potentially very short life also. How it would feel to see and experience death and violence everyday. Well if would have lived you whole life in a world like that maybe it wouldn't bee so hard to rise your fist (or a weapon of some kind) against other person. But think how would react if your normal peaceful life would suddenly change to that of violenceland. Could you watch other people dying by your hands, not once or twice but time and time again.

Lucky in videogame land you don't always have to fight against your fellow man, maybe idea of killing zombies or monsters feels any better. It's somewhat of a fact that geeks like zombies, they have their zombie survival plans and whatnot, but how would the reality of that kind of situation to be. Could your average gamer really bash the head in on something that still looks kinda like a man. Feeling the bones to crack and blood spatter on you, how many people would have a stomach for that. And don't think that non-human monsters are really that much easier to stand, they too probably have blood or other liquids splattering to your face.



So, in the beginning I said that I didn't like this months musing topic, remember? One of the reasons was that I didn't really get how I could get there something else than just alternative reality fanfiction. Little written fiction might be nice, but I like my blogs to have some point, maybe something to think about, so let's get away from my fantasy land (it's not a nice place to stay for long) and analyze it a bit.

In one way of thinking the fictional scenarios I described could be the final form of video game realism. Games have tried for long be more and more realistic and all this new stuff that is coming out, motion control and 3D, it's partially there to make games more realistic. So think about as realistic as possible videogame violence, it would be like a real thing, but you couldn't get hurt and you don't actually hurt anybody. I don't think that I would really enjoy that kind of overly realistic violence in my games. At the beginning of the article I said that I have had no problems with violence in videogames, but I think that videogames have stayed still quite far of realism and that is fine for me.

I don't want to wait for the day when I'm able to swing down my [controller of future] and feel it to connect with the head of my enemy. Maybe that future won't come, maybe it will, but it's not for me.