Warning: Do not click on any links without checking for (NSFW) warnings. Links may include websites to real dead bodies from war situations. Do not complain to me because I have warned you.

Violence in video games is like pancakes and syrup. Sometimes you add too much syrup and you drown your pancakes. With video games, you get something like Manhunt. I know this may sound a bit lame and conservative, but does anyone believe there’s a limit to how violent and how gory a video game can be?

Our technology is growing incredibly fast and it may not be long until video games begin to look like a Pixar movie or like some other good CG movie. When that happens, how will violence be handled? Will Call of Duty 8 look like some Iraq battle zone, and if it does, will we be so desensitized that it really doesn’t faze us? Don’t get me wrong, either. This isn’t an anti-video game post about how video games will ruin society.

If I played Resident Evil 4 at a younger age I would have been disgusted and grossed out. Now, I don’t even blink or react negatively at all. And in the case of something like Gears of War, it’s cool. I wonder if I continued to play my violent game, when games do come around to looking realistic, will I not care for someone’s face being blown off by a high caliber sniper rifle bullet.

I remember that Unreal Engine presentation that was at GDC. Imagine something like that but instead of a block of meat you have a face. The presentation is there to show you how their physics engine will allow developers to create realistic body destruction. You’ll sit there as a the demonstration consist of a video of a face being blown away by a shotgun in the most realistic way. You see an eyeball explode in one direction, brain matter going another and the skull flying back. The next shot is a sniper shooting a guy in the same place, but this time brains exploding out of the back of the skull. The following shot is of the guy on the floor, gushing blood out of both ends. The entrance and exit point of the bullet. Something like this or this (NSFW).

You can compare it to movies if you want, but there is a difference between movies and video games. With a movie it’s passive. With a video game you’re the one pulling the trigger. And no, it’s not really pulling a trigger, J.T.. Please don’t take this is a video games cause real life violence. I know when I’m playing a video game that it isn’t real. I know that there are consequences in real life, and I’m also not insane. I cherish life and other people’s lives. I can’t even kill a bug without thinking of how painful my foot must have been when I stomped on it. I’m not bullshitting, either. I feel guilty when I kill bugs.

Wow, ignore that digression. What I’m trying to get out is do we really need the intense violence to be any more realistic? The way things are now, it’s sort of cartoony and unrealistic. In Gears of War the blood looks like jello and in Ninja Gaiden you’re killing monsters. It still looks silly. If violence does begin to look like some torture porn R rated movie, I don’t know if I will be able to handle it, let alone enjoy myself. I don’t want to play Saw the game. And I guess it also goes with the context of the game. Something like Call of Duty may be appropriate to give you that “war is hell” feel, but I still think there should be a line drawn.

There should never be a 3rd party enforcing some crazy rule of what's too violent and what isn't. I would love it if developers focused less on how violent they can make their game, and move their time and resources on other things. That is unless of course there's a reason. And that reason could be a lot of things. There really is no need for it most of the time.

EDIT: I added a few more sentences to make my point a bit more clear.