When I was 10 years old, I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the first time. I found the humor to be strange and some of the words very foreign. To this day, I struggle to recall the definition of the word "pram" (which, as I understand it is the essential Britishness of a person). However, amidst all the strange and seemingly random jokes, two important things happened.

First, my sense of humor was totally transformed. That movie is singlehandedly responsible for changing me from a dumb kid who laughed at dick and fart jokes to a dumb kid who laughed at British dick and fart jokes. Second, I saw bare breasts for the first time with an adult in the room. I realize now that the boobs in that movie were not particularly scandalous, but I was raised in a very religious family from Southern Georgia.



What I've discovered since is that American and European cultures tend to have very opposing viewpoints on sex and violence. In the United States, sex sells, but it's certainly not allowed on network television. The most scandalous thing we've ever seen was Janet Jackson's not-entirely-exposed breast for 2 seconds and jiggly old man butt [Both links unfortunately SFW].



However, the other side of that coin is that American culture tends to promote violence. Immediately after 9/11, a show called 24 became an overnight sensation as it explored America's fascination with the violence caused by terrorism on American soil. In the show, main character Jack Bauer is tasked with stopping a large, complex terrorist plot in a mere 24 hours. The show's narrative always include Jack shooting lots and lots of bad guys as well as graphic scenes of torture. 24 received critical acclaim and the viewers to match.

From my limited understanding, European culture tends to have the exact opposite view. Violence is always contextualized, whereas sexuality is watered down by ubiquity. This is not to say that violence does not exist, but it is not always instantly justified by the common culture.

My view became solidified because of two British games: Fable 2 and Enslaved.

Fable 2 explores sexuality in a rather simplistic, but interesting way. Whereas God of War and Grand Theft Auto seem to promote objectification in their casual, masculine-focused sex romps, Fable 2 imposes consequences for your actions. There are pragmatic and economic concerns for having unprotected sex (STD's and Babies respectively). However, the game also goes on to explore the societal implications for being a total whorebag. I wish they had explored these social consequences a bit more (having citizens and specifically questgivers treat you differently), I applaud the game for trying to explore sexuality without really exploiting a simple masculine power fantasy.



Enslaved breaches the other area: violence. While I obviously haven't played the whole game, one observation I made is that the character never fought any of the human slavers during the entire course of the demo. The game really went out of its way to allow the player to experience the joy of beating the hell out of things with a big staff without the moral implications of murdering hundreds and hundreds of people. In fact, throughout the entire demo and following trailer, there was no instance of a human being harmed.

I know that these two games don't represent every European developer (Obviously DICE has no trouble piling up the bodies in Battlefield). I'm also not interesting in condemning any one culture. I do think it's important to know that there are alternative ways of thinking around the world, which means that there can be an alternative form of thinking right where you live. Not everyone in the world is the same, so if you are a pacifist in Texas or a Gearhead in Britain, remember that you're not alone.